Our response to recent emails from headspace and Orygen

Collaborative text

Feb 22, 2024

Written by Mental Health Workers for Palestine (MHWFP), Hana Raju and Matt Chun, alongside Palestinian community members, and past and present headspace staff.

On 9 February, at 4:06pm, headspace sent an email to its staff. Two minutes later, a similar email was sent by Orygen to its staff. These emails were a direct response to our recent article.

We note that these emails represent headspace and Orygen’s first communication regarding their ties to ~~Israel~~, following many years of silence on the issue, and despite many years of internal pressure from staff to divest.

Despite a 10-year relationship with headspace ~~Israel~~, through branding, partnerships and intellectual property, there has been little to no transparency around such as funding and operational agreements. In his email to staff last week in response to the circulated email, headspace CEO, Jason Trethowan, attempted to distance headspace ~~Australia~~ from headspace ~~Israel~~, claiming that there are is ‘no operational or financial relationship’.

These internal emails to headspace and Orygen staff dismiss our article as ‘misinformation’. We reiterate that our article was informed through thorough research, providing extensive references and sources, establishing significant ties to zionism and the zionist state with the information publicly available.

There are an abundance of references to partnerships with headspace National and headspace ~~Israel~~, and between Orygen and headspace ~~Israel~~. We note just a few below, and further in our list of references and previous article.

An Orygen post celebrating the collaboration with headspace Israel:

headspace’s ‘2017-2018 Year in Review’ publication references the ‘continued collaboration with ENOSH, the ~~Israeli~~ Mental Health Association’:

Then headspace ~~Australia~~ CEO, Chris Tanti, referencing the ‘collaboration’ between headspace ~~Israel~~ and headspace ~~Australia~~, boasting that it is a collaboration in ‘not just the intellectual property, but in the idea that it involves the entire community’:

We would like to highlight (and are concerned) that headspace CEO Jason Trethowan deleted his Twitter account, immediately after we shared screenshots of posts about his 2019 trips to ~~Israel~~. There is a clear lack of transparency within headspace and Orygen.

We would like to note that Trethowan (who you must remember, claims no financial or operational ties to headspace ~~Israel~~) has publicly boasted of headspace’s international relationship, evident through his visit to Israel in 2019 and his hosting of headspace ~~Israel~~ ‘colleagues’ (as described by Jason) in headspace offices.

We express concern that the violence of colonisation and resistance, imposed upon Palestinian land by the presence of a genocidal occupier, is here exploited as a fun travel story in the news reporting at the time:

The ties are clear. Our demands are clear. We reiterate, and extend;

headspace National must cease all ties with headspace ~~Israel~~, whether financial and operational, or through partnerships or branding; and retract the usage of the headspace name from any operations in ~~Israel~~.
Divest from all zionist funding.
headspace National must review their international partnerships and agreements, and engage in landback and Palestinian sovereignty policy work as reparations for the harm caused to Palestinian people living in both Palestine and the diaspora.
Lobby the ~~Australian~~ Government to call for a permanent ceasefire, the release of all Palestinian prisoners and the end to the zionist occupation of Palestine, ensuring the right of return for refugees and those who have been forced to seek asylum outside of Palestine.
Lobby the ~~Australian~~ Government to provide consular support and permanent protection to those who are currently choosing to flee Gaza and Occupied Palestine.
Provide significant, meaningful and culturally safe care to survivors and victims of the genocide. This includes providing meaningful support to all current headspace staff who are impacted by the events in Palestine.
Fund Palestinian mental health and health organisations in Palestine and ~~Australia~~, towards trauma informed healing and support.

We reiterate:

Young people deserve mental health services that are caring and trauma-informed, not services that actively perpetuate trauma and contribute to the oppression of Palestinians. If headspace exists, as it purports, to lessen structural barriers to mental health services, these structural barriers must include imperialism, colonialism and state violence.

Who are we?

We operate across unceded Aboriginal Nations across ~~Australia~~. Some of us come with our own lived experience of genocide, war, displacement and colonial trauma. Some are from Palestine or other occupied lands. Others join us in solidarity and in duty as settlers.

We come together with the ethical urgency demanded of us in our professional practice and in our humanity. We are in solidarity forever with oppressed peoples resisting violent occupations, and we will not be silent.

We carry the voices and stories of those martyrs who have perished at the hands of ~~Israel~~’s violence; archiving and direct action are our tools of resistance.

As Palestinian academic and writer, Refaat Alareer, who was recently murdered, wrote: