The One Young World Summit is an international event held in a different country every year that offers 2000+ individuals responsible for shaping the future of our world, the opportunity to come together to be inspired, share learnings and connect.
Lydia Dean has been chosen to represent Aspect and her autism community at the summit.
At 27 years of age, Lydia, was finally diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum in her late teens after suffering significant mental health issues for most of her teen years. Her experience in the public mental health system leading up to her diagnosis has led to a role as an advocate for her community in the mental health space.
“Many mental health services just don’t have the depth of knowledge that is required to really support an Autistic individual. While disability providers don’t have the knowledge to deal with mental health issues – but with autism, mental health concerns are often a cooccurring diagnosis,” Lydia said.
“Autistic adults struggle in their day to day lives with mental health challenges, with figures showing that up to that 70% of Autistic individuals suffer from a mental health disorder and that Autistic adults are nine times more likely to die by suicide than the general population.”
After finally being diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum in 2019 and receiving support for both her mental health and autism, Lydia applied for and was accepted into the Future Leaders Program, a program run by the Sylvia Rodger Academy through Autism CRC, which aims to empower Autistics adults to explore and develop their leadership skills.
“Future Leaders basically changed my whole outlook on life. I was in a pretty bad space before the Program. I learned that it’s okay to be autistic and I am now doing things I never thought I could do before,” she said.
Lydia has spent the last few years delivering speeches about her experiences to suicide prevention groups and at mental health events and developing a range of helpful resources to educate and raise awareness about the extremely high level of mental health conditions in the Autistic community.
“My aim at the One Young World Summit is to raise these issues at international level and meet with leaders in the health care space, because I know that our unique Autistic way of thinking, can be used as a strength to help improve outcomes for Autistic people.”
In 2020 VivCourt, a corporate sponsor of Aspect, offered to sponsor an Autistic representative to attend the One Young World Summit and Lydia was chosen as the representative. However, Covid restrictions prevented Lydia from attending in person.
But VivCourt held a spot for her until she was able to attend, and this week Lydia will join other delegates at the One Young World Summit in Manchester, UK, to challenge world leaders, and engage with, and be mentored by expert industry influencers and make lasting connections.
Effie Mitchell, Social Purpose and Impact, from VivCourt said that they were pleased Aspect has selected a great representative in Lydia to join one of their staff at the One Young World Summit in 2022.
“Immersing themselves with an inspiring group of people and able to speak and act on their future is vital for young people in today’s world.
“After our first attendance at The One Young World Summit, we vowed that each year, each staff member would be accompanied by someone from a not for profit we work with who supports significant positive change for people with lived experience. Such strong partnerships can only benefit us all.”
