Locations
 View our state map for location specific information. Click here...
|
Home  Orientation Mental health services
 In rural Australia, most mental health care is done by primary care workers such as general practitioners, nurses and generic health workers. Rural towns may be too small to support a specialist mental health service, or the services that are there may have difficulty recruiting specialists. As a result, specialist services, such as psychiatry, are usually based in larger towns.
It is more likely that patients will seek mental health support from a generalist worker, such as a general practitioner, a community nurse, or an aboriginal health worker. Non-medical professionals such as teachers, religious ministers and even financial advisors may be used as a source of counselling and support.
It is likely that you will need to liaise with primary care workers who are encountering mental health problems in their patients.
Points to consider if working as a psychiatrist in rural Australia include:
- be aware of different presentations such as the higher rates of somatisation in your patients;
- be confident working together with general practitioners and other health practitioners for the management of mental health conditions including familiarity with how to write a management plan; and
- become involved in promotion of mental health, both among other doctors and the general public.
Mental health services in rural Australia face two major barriers to delivering care:
A) Availability, there are not enough services to meet need.
Health services of all kinds, especially specialist care, are in short supply in rural Australia. In some towns, you may find that there is no mental health service at all.
In addition to specialists who visit from other areas, specialist support may be accessed via telepsychiatry.
B) Acceptability, people in need are unwilling to seek treatment.
There can be a lot of stigma attached to mental illness and mental health services in Australia. The close-knit nature of rural communities can be a two-edged sword – on one hand these communities can provide a lot of support for residents, on the other they can exclude people who do not conform.
|
|
