![](\"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/blackdog.jpg\")
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The Black Dog Riders have set off on a 3000 km ride from Sydney to Alice Springs, to raise awareness about depression and the need for people who experience it to talk more openly about it, with friends and mental health professionals. This comes at a time when the federal government are cutting psychological services for those who want to talk through their problems with their preferred mental health practitioner, rather than being put into heavily case managed programs from 1 November 2011. You can read more about this story here<\/a>, or watch the youtube clip about the Black Dog Riders here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Oppose the cuts to psychological services by signing our petition at at CommunityRun and Change.org<\/a>. You can also join in discusison about this important issue on our Facebook Group<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you would like to email your concerns to a politician, you might start by taking this directly to Prime Minister Julia Gillard: http:\/\/www.pm.gov.au\/contact-your-pm\/<\/a>. You can also send an eail to the Mark Butler, the Minister for Mental Health<\/a>, or Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, the Shadow Minister for Mental Health,<\/a> or Senator Penny Wright, senator for The Greens on Mental Health<\/a>. Make your message loud and clear \u2013 ten sessions is not enough. Every voice makes a difference!<\/p>\n Your comments are welcome below<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Black Dog Riders have set off on a 3000 km ride from Sydney to Alice Springs, to raise awareness about depression and the need for people who experience it to talk more openly about it, with friends and mental health professionals. This comes at a time when the federal government are cutting psychological services […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":899,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Want to help?<\/strong><\/h3>\n