Breaking Down the Silos in Mental Health Care
Do you know the other professionals working in mental health in your area? Working in isolation in mental health is a great way to get burnt out. We all need support while we work to support the mental health of others.
So what do I do for professional support?
Amongst other things I:
- belong to a peer supervision group which meets regularly to discuss difficult cases and interesting things we have been involved in lately
- pay someone to supervise me in the care of problem patients
- keep in regular touch with the other health professionals in my patient’s care team (SMS messages are a wonderful thing!)
- do regular mental health training
- go to MHPN meetings - and run one as well!
The Mental Health Professionals Network (MHPH) begun with federal government funding with the aim of improving communication between the various professionals working in mental health.
The project provides funding and administrative support for the establishment of local interdisciplinary networks. Local practitioners are encouraged to organise meetings in venues of their choice, consult with their local network members about preferred topics and decide with their group about the frequency and nature of their activities. Funding is provided based on the number of group participants and groups are left to spend the funding in the way they feel is most appropriate to the group members’ needs.
There are currently 380 established networks across the country, 41% are in rural communities.
The groups may be general meet-and-greet groups but they usually involve a guest speaker or case discussion. A few groups have been established to cater for mental health professionals working with specific groups of patients or particular mental health disorders, for example, the group I facilitate with a counsellor friend of mine is for mental health professionals interested in eating disorders.
You can find a group near you or, if there is no group close by, give some thought to establishing one yourself. MHPN will provide you with all the resources you need to do so and attending a group is a great way to get to know people who can support you in your work.
There is another area of MHPN activity as well. More than 50 webinars on various mental health related topics have been produced and made available in the webinar library on the MHPN website . Recent webinars include such diverse topics as, exam anxiety, gender dysphoria, self-harm, first episode psychosis, mental health and methamphetamine use and returning to work after long term injury.
Gerhard is a full professor of Clinical Psychology at Linköping University, Sweden since 2003, an
d affiliated researcher at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. Professor Andersson is an internationally recognized researcher in the field of CBT delivered through information and communication technology, as well as the author of the book “The Internet and CBT: a clinical guide”.
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