Knowing what to do and being able to do it: How mental health services influence the strategies parents use to support young people with mental illness.
Anne Honey, Sarah Alchin, Nicola Hancock
Research into mental health services and parenting strategies has been found to look more at parental characteristics and their attitudes rather than parents conscious and active efforts.
What influences parent practices: focus on mental health services within a study
– Treatment
– Activities and behaviours
– Thoughts and feelings
– An ordinary life
Conducted in-depth interviews with parents using constant comparative analysis. Looking into parent’s knowledge and beliefs about mental illness, the young person as an individual, parent and child roles and other supports.
Parental ability is commonly influenced by:
- Time
- Financial supports
- Social supports
- Competing demands
- Parent-child relationship
- Parent skills and characteristics
- Emotions and coping
- Self-confidence
Anne indicted that it is important for mental health workers to understand these factors to enable them to tailor their treatments for parents to best support adolescents with mental illness.
Talking through: Lessons from Barwon Health Jigsaw’s new group programs
Renee Bauer Melissa O’Shea Christian Cavaniglia
Headspace in Geelong is a specialist youth service established in 2005 across three different sites in Victoria. Headspace aims to deliver improvements in mental health, social wellbeing and economic participation of young Australians ages 12 to 25.
Three types of groups run at Headspace include secondary consultation multiagency case groups, multifamily group and youth dialectical behaviour therapy.
The secondary consultation multiagency groups have been found to improve trust, strengthen professional relationships, reduce duplication, opportunities for new thinking and uptake of innovative processes, networking encourages reflective practice.
The multifamily groups worked well to increase the social network for both client and families, enable families to benefit from each other experiences. The groups reinforced a problem solving process for practical issues and provided psycho-education benefits outside of a clinical setting and decrease the risk of relapse.
Youth dialectical behaviour therapy is evidence based therapeutic program that headspace runs in 2 hour and half hour sessions with Geelong community youth which has been another effective group program with positive patient outcomes.
The service development of their clinicians involves developing expertise, exploring gaps, understanding health partnership and understanding regional youth health needs.
