Welcome to the first of our regular columns by Dr Jan Orman from the Black Dog Institute providing reliable evidence-based Australian online resources for mental healthcare. In her first column Dr Orman looks at Portals to Care – online repositories of all the information you need to start using online resources. There are three major Australian portals:
Online mental health resources can look like a confusing mass at first glance. There is so much available and is hard to know how they can be useful.
The best places to start to find information about what’s available and what would suit the people you are helping manage their psychological wellbeing are portals. They are online repositories of all the information you need to start using online resources.
There are three major Australian portals:
Head to Health
Head to Health is a constantly evolving website that provides information for consumers and health professionals about Australian online mental health resources. It has great search functionality. Searches can be filtered to suit patient characteristics like age and cultural group. A function called Sam the Chatbot provides easy access to information about resources to suit specific needs. Asking Sam to recommend something for a specific symptom will lead to a list of appropriate resources including websites for psychoeducation, apps and online treatment programs. Find the portal at www.headtohealth.gov.au and while you are there you might notice that there are specific sections for people affected by the Black Summer bushfires and those experiencing CoVID related distress. Head to Health provides direct links to all the resources it recommends.
WellMob
WellMob is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander specific portal that provides links to more than 200 culturally appropriate online resources to promote cultural and emotional wellbeing. These resources differ from more Western style resources by including much more narrative based material in the form of audios and videos of peoples’ stories as well as the more traditional sorts of resources including online assessment tools and treatment programs. It’s a very important and useful site for anyone looking for material to support their work with indigenous patients and clients.
MumSpace
MumSpace is a site that will lead you to a host of resources to support the mental health of parents in the perinatal period. These include websites, apps and treatment programs. Definitely something worth knowing about as we see people struggling with the demands of parenthood.
Take a look at these sites and we’ll come back to talk about some of the to the individual resources they recommend and how to use them in future columns.
For more information and training go to: