Listening Beyond the System: Bicultural Voices on Mental Health

Listening Beyond the System: Bicultural Voices on Mental Health is cohealth’s bicultural workers podcast, sharing community-led perspectives on mental health, culture, migration and care in Victoria’s refugee and migrant communities.

The new podcast series celebrates the strength, resilience and collective care that exist within refugee and migrant communities, while highlighting the essential role bicultural workers play in supporting mental health awareness and wellbeing.

“I’ve seen through the work that I’ve done in community that much of the information that is out there about mental health comes from a very ‘white-lens’ approach,” says podcast guest and South Sudanese lived-experience worker Nanchok Chol.

“I’d say a big barrier is that the professionals or the practitioners in these mainstream mental health organisations don’t look like the people that they’re serving,” Nanchok adds. “How can people feel safe to seek support if the people that they’re seeing believe that trust is not there?”

Bicultural workers use their cultural knowledge, language skills, lived experience and community connections to work with people who share similar lived experiences. They elevate community voices, advocate for community needs, co-design and deliver programs, share information and help facilitate cultural safety.

cohealth’s Victorian Bicultural Workers Network has more than 510 registered members. Since cohealth’s Bicultural Program began in 2017, it has reached more than 232,000 people, including 4,301 people across 65 community-led projects in the 2024–25 financial year.

“My community is incredibly diverse culturally, politically, religiously,” says Sara Mohsen, an Egyptian Muslim bicultural worker featured in the podcast, “so, there isn’t one single narrative for everyone.”

“The strength of the community is the strong sense of responsibility towards each other,” she says, “and the resilience that we have in continuing to prioritise the family connection, education and preserving our own identity, faith and values, especially in a foreign country.”

cohealth’s Bicultural Program Lead Jasmine Phillips hosts Listening Beyond the System: Bicultural Voices on Mental Health. She says the podcast creates space for bicultural workers to share perspectives that are often missing from mainstream conversations about mental health.

“Bicultural workers are a designated lived experience workforce,” Jasmine says.

“Their lived experience is grounded in migration — navigating new systems, languages, and cultural expectations, often within systems that were not designed for them, while remaining deeply connected to their communities and the cultural knowledge they hold.”

The cohealth bicultural workers podcast explores how culture, migration experiences, language and community connection shape the way people understand distress, healing and recovery. It also provides cross-cultural insights for mental health clinicians, GPs, nurses and other people who support the mental health and wellbeing of refugee communities.

“I’m really just proud of all of the communities that are taking up space and autonomy to create the changes that they want,” Nanchok says. “I feel, in the past couple of years, I’ve really seen that within so many different communities in Melbourne here, and it really does empower me to continue the work that I’m doing within the South Sudanese community.”

“Bicultural workers need to be acknowledged and recognised more formally,” Sara says, “because they are carrying already emotional labour and lived experience.”

“They need to be integrated and to feel valued.”

Presented by cohealth’s Bicultural Program and its Victorian Bicultural Workers Network, Listening Beyond the System: Bicultural Voices on Mental Health is available wherever you get your podcasts, with new episodes released monthly.