Health service boosts mental health support

GREAT Ocean Road Health (GORH) has expanded its mental health services to provide more frequent and comprehensive support for patients, in response to an increase in demand during the pandemic.

The Surf Coast health service’s social worker, Amy Adair, has undergone specialist training to provide treatments in line with a patient’s mental health plan as part of an extended support role.

GORH said its community engagement, which includes virtual forums and discussions with local organisations and schools, had identified a need for expanded services amid lingering COVID impacts such as from loss of social groups for exercise and social interaction, changes in work and threat the virus for vulnerable residents.

GORH’s director of community services Shelly Pascoe said the pandemic had applied further pressure to an already stretched small regional service, prompting a rethink of how it approaches mental health concerns.

“Our experience has been that people are calling a councillor and trying to get an appointment and haven’t been able to do so,” she said.

“So we thought; what can we do together to support our community?”

Mental health services in the region had previously focussed on people that present to councillors or services during instances of extreme stress or trauma.

But GORH’s expanded services will use a therapeutic behavioural method, which targets a preventative approach through group-based, individual and outreach programs that aim to treat conditions before the crisis point.

“It’s a little bit innovative in the health space. It’s an amazing service and something other health services aren’t doing because they don’t have that level of qualification in their worker,” Ms Pascoe said.

“A traditional approach assists with an entry-level inquiry or when there’s a crisis – it might be someone needing accommodation or food, trouble with accounts, or who might be experiencing domestic violence, it’s very broad.

“The mental health social worker also assists with those sorts of inquiries, but it’s a therapeutic- based support that you can work through with them to resolve and give them really great strategies in the short and long-term to optimise their wellbeing and mental health.”

Ms Adair will now be in at Lorne and Apollo Bay for two days a week each to provide more support, while a GORH has also employed a new social worker for two days a week at Apollo Bay.

Ms Pascoe said a silver lining of the pandemic had been an upward trend of awareness and discussion of mental health issues, which had encouraged more residents to seek help than previously.

The health service has also continued its “It’s ok not to be ok” initiative, which also invites residents to seek help.

GORH accepts referrals for people in its catchment by phone: 5237 8575.