Authenticity, an impossible dream?

How shunning vulnerability in mental health organisational culture harms us all

For a mental health organisation, making the choice to employ consumer and family/carer lived experience staff is a powerful statement of intent. It signals a commitment to authenticity and to valuing the expertise that comes from navigating the mental health system firsthand.

However, if that same organisation has not actively cultivated a culture of vulnerability, it places its lived experience staff in an impossible and damaging position. The organisation’s failure to embrace vulnerability creates a toxic paradox, turning someone’s key asset, their lived experience, into a liability. But this corrosive culture doesn’t stop there; it silently undermines the wellbeing of the entire workforce, and can then be carried into the staff/consumer/family interaction.

A lack of organisational vulnerability creates this widespread damage;

1. It Forces the Performance of “Perfect Recovery”

In a culture where leaders and other clinicians do not model vulnerability where they don’t admit mistakes or express uncertainty, the underlying vibe, rule even, is clear: we must appear infallible.

For a lived experience worker, this creates a pressure which is at best inhibiting, at worst crushing. They are implicitly told that while their past vulnerability is their qualification, any present vulnerability is a disqualification. The potential to feel the demand for a performative story of perfect, linear recovery, or to somehow abdicate from their personal caring role is real. An expression of views which suggest, based on lived experience, a service approach needs to change risks being quickly extinguished. If what has been learnt through exposed vulnerability is not treated with genuine respect and consideration is the lived experience, and person who carries it, actually valued? To retain employment are they forced to directly contradict the authentic purpose of their role, resulting in role drift and significant internal dissonance?

2. It Fuels a Silent Epidemic Among Clinical Staff

This pressure to appear infallible extends deep into the clinical workforce, creating a dangerous professional paradox. Clinicians are in the role of the ‘compassionate provider’ of care while being terrified of admitting they might need it themselves.

Public, and most private, mental health services in Australia are medically dominated and therefore led by psychiatrists. They are in a unique position to have a major influence on culture. It is therefore worth looking briefly at the reality for doctors, where we find statistics which are concerning. A landmark national survey by Beyond Blue found that doctors experience substantially higher rates of psychological distress than the general population. More recent data shared by the RACGP and acknowledged by the Australian Government in 2024 highlight the scale of the crisis, showing that around seven out of ten frontline health workers report symptoms of moderate to severe burnout.

A major contributing factor is a workplace culture steeped in stigma. In the Beyond Blue survey, 40% of doctors agreed that colleagues with a mental health condition were perceived as less competent. This creates intense fears:

• Fear of Professional Judgment: They worry their colleagues will view them as less competent or emotionally unstable.
• Fear of Career Repercussions: Many fear that disclosing a mental health challenge could impact their professional registration, a fear so common it is directly addressed by support services like the Black Dog Institute’s TEN (The Essential Network) for health professionals.
• Internalised Pressure: There is an immense internal pressure to be the “invulnerable healer.”

This is a direct consequence of a culture where leadership fails to model vulnerability. When leaders project an image of stoic perfection, they reinforce the toxic myth that clinicians must be, or at least appear to be, superhuman. The result is, at least, twofold;

• a workforce suffering in silence, masks are an essential part of work attire,
• And a reluctance to truly engage with collaborative working with consumers, families and even colleagues!

This all leads to higher rates of burnout and staff turnover.

3. It Creates Widespread Isolation and Prevents True Integration

Vulnerability is the bedrock of trust and connection. In a non-vulnerable (“fear-based”) culture, team members whether lived experience or not are less likely to be open, ask genuine questions, or build deep, supportive relationships.

For a lived experience worker, this results in profound professional isolation and “othering.” For clinical staff, it means carrying their professional burdens alone. In either case, the worker has nowhere safe to turn. The emotional toll of the work cannot be safely processed within the team, fostering a disconnected and fragmented workforce.

4. It Fosters Tokenism and Stifles Contribution

When leadership does not grant explicit “permission” for vulnerability, the organisation is incapable of handling authentic insights regardless of who they come from.

The lived experience worker who speaks a vulnerable truth about a flawed system is often labelled “difficult.” Similarly, the clinician who vulnerably admits a program isn’t working or that their team is at breaking point may be seen as “negative” or “not a team player.”

In this environment, everyone learns to stay quiet. The lived experience role is reduced to tokenism, and the valuable frontline insights of both lived experience and clinical staff are ignored. The organisation gets to maintain a comfortable status quo at the expense of genuine improvement and staff wellbeing.

“Nothing in nature ‘becomes itself’ without being vulnerable,” (Maté) for an organisation to operate without a culture of vulnerability is, at best, a path to stagnation. At worst, it is an act of profound ethical negligence to its entire staff and the population it serves.

It sets up dedicated employees for burnout and harm, silences the very people who can help the organisation improve, and ultimately exposes its own claims of “authenticity” as hollow.

True authenticity requires vulnerability not just from consumers and families and not just from lived experience staff but from every single person within the organisation, starting with its leaders. Without it, the promise of a healthy, effective and authentic mental health service is destined to fail, but we do have a choice, it is possible, though maybe a little scary, to create the culture which carries us in a new direction.

References

• Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022). National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing.
• Australian Government, Department of Health and Aged Care (2024). Nurses and midwives get lifeline: new program tackles burnout head-on.
• Beyond Blue. National Mental Health Survey of Doctors and Medical Students.
• Black Dog Institute. The Essential Network (TEN) for Health Professionals.
• Maté, G., & Maté, D. (2022). The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture. Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
• The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) (2022). Why Australia needs a systemic response to burnout.