MTAA Super has appointed well-known racing identity Mark Skaife as ambassador for its ‘readthesigns’ mental health campaign.
The campaign is a joint initiative between MTAA Super and Lifeline that has been running for eight years, according to MTAA Super executive manager of member services John Jones.
“We started the campaign as a result of trustees’ concerns about the number of death claims coming through suicide of our young members, as our membership base is predominantly young males,” he said.
The program is aimed at promoting positive help-seeking behaviours in members. This is done by Lifeline conducting depression and suicide awareness presentations as part of members’ apprenticeship training.
Jones said that through MTAA Super’s partnership with V8 Supercars, they were able to secure Mark Skaife as an ambassador for the program.
“The way to engage with young people and get them interested in what you want them to engage with is by speaking through people they look up to,” he said.
According to Jones, Skaife will be involved with the program as much as possible, and will be engaged in developing a new training DVD as well as speaking at certain graduation nights and more.
He said the nature of the program made it difficult to assess, but overall MTAA Super had received positive feedback from trustees and members.
MTAA Super’s insurer MetLife also saw fit to remove the suicide exclusion clause from the fund’s policy, which Jones said had to do in part with the success of the program.
