Authors: Sue McConnachie, Melissa Knight, Mim Dineen, Nyree Gale
Year: 2017
Event: 2017 TheMHS Conference
Subject: e-health, reform
Type of resource: Conference Presentations and Papers
Abstract: “The need for action is critical when considering almost four million people in Australia will experience a mental illness in any one year…More efficient and sustainable approaches are needed to improve the system for individuals, across the life course and across illness severity, and to improve targeting of efforts” (Department of Health, 2015: p2).
These words have set the scene for significant mental health reform in this country. Primary Health Networks (PHN) across the country have been charged by the Federal Government to be major facilitators in the roll out of this reform. The conference presentation will provide the experiences of the Murray PHN and Black Dog Institute as they lead with innovative mental health service initiatives across a vast expanse of rural and regional Victoria from Mildura in the North West, to Woodend in the south, across to Seymour and up to Albury - an area of almost 100,000 square kilometres that is home to more than 560,000 people.
E-mental health is confirmed as an important component of mental health service delivery and the speakers will each report on the Murray PHN journey in setting up digital mental health assessment initiatives in GP settings across its vast region.
Learning Objectives
Learning Objective 1:
- They will develop an understanding of how the Federal Government mental health reform is being facilitated by a PHN
- They will understand the logistics in having this reform operationalised and will hear about the experiences of attaining true integrated, collaborative, mental health practice
- They will gain additional knowledge of the mental health reform directions through the presentation of actual and current examples occurring in the Murray PHN region:
o Digital StepCare: Mental Health Assessment and intervention in a GP Practice
o AOD Brief Interventions
o Suicide Prevention – A Systems Approach
o A Co-Design Project
Learning Objective 2: This topic is relevant to mental health services and mental health issues because it encourages the audience to consider contemporary, innovative mental health service practice and it will raise their consciousness in regard to delivering, “More efficient and sustainable approaches … to improve the system for individuals, across the life course and across illness severity…” (Department of Health, 2015: p.3).
References
Department of Health, 2015, Australian Government Response to Contributing Lives, Thriving Communities – Review of Mental Health Programmes and Services, Canberra, Australia.
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, 2011, Commissioning stepped care for people with common mental health disorders, U.K. http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cmg41
murrayphn.org.au/co-design, 2017
Leitch,E., Wright, E., Harris, M., Meurk.C., & Whiteford, H., 2016, Implementing a Stepped Care approach to mental health services within Australia, University of Queensland & Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, Wacol, Queensland, Australia
This resource is only available for subscribers. If you have a subscription, please log in. Otherwise, click here to purchase a subscription.