Youth Advisory Council 2023

Mariah is a Pakistani-Australian living on beautiful Guringai country on the northern beaches of Sydney. She works fulltime as a management consultant and is also a blog writer for a women’s health practice. Mariah’s hobbies are reading, playing in the sun, exploring new places, going to the dog park with her family and (unfortunately) watching Love Island UK.

As the eldest daughter of migrant parents, Mariah understands that for children of immigrant families the culture at school or work is often different to the culture at home. This has both positive and negative consequences. From a youth mental health perspective, people from subcontinental communities are encouraged to keep their pain to themselves, making mental ill-health a more shameful and isolating experience.

Mariah is passionate about addressing the huge gap between what is known about mental health and what is done to help the millions of people who are struggling. Coming from a medical family, one thing that has struck her about mental health compared with to other areas of medicine is what the science has delivered for public health. Reductions in disorders or death aren’t occurring the way she’d hoped. She is committed to helping with research, education and delivery of patient-centric care.