Top 25 Community Priorities
The 'Out of Hospital, Out of Mind' survey asked people to indicate their priority areas of action. These are the Top 25 Priorities, indicated by the community:
1. Support for changes in workforce attitudes:
- Focus on changing attitudes among emergency care staff
- Focus on changing attitudes among general practitioners
- Focus on changing attitudes among mental health nurses
- Focus on changing attitudes among psychiatrists
- Focus on changing attitudes among other non-medical specialist staff
- Focus on changing attitudes among psychologists
- Other (eg, attitudes of general health workers)
2. Support for general mental health promotion and disease prevention initiatives:
- Support for school-based promotion and prevention strategies
- Support for workplace-based promotion and prevention strategies
- Support for emphasis on social and economic determinants of illness
- Support for emphasis on childhood determinants of illness
- Support for national research and service consortia to improve the level of evidence
- Support for e-health and other technology-based approaches to 'health promotion and disease prevention
- Other (eg. assertive outreach for families/ children of parents with a mental illness)
3. Human rights focus:
- Focus on discrimination in insurance, employment, disability assessment and housing support
- Focus on community neglect as a human rights issue
- Appoint a permanent Deputy Commissioner for Mental Health within the Human Rights Commission
- Prioritise reduction of human rights abuses in acute care settings
- Focus on human rights abuses in long-term care settings
- Initiate a national enquiry into human rights (i.e. a 10-year follow-up to the Burdekin Report)
- Introduce national, State and/or regional reporting of abuse or neglect
- Other (eg. guidelines for human rights and treatment)
4. Service development between mental health and alcohol or substance abuse:
- Development of innovative approaches to primary care management of patients with both mental health and alcohol or substance abuse
- Development of staff education and professional training
- Development of clear agreements between national mental health and alcohol or substance abuse strategies
- Development of innovative approaches to provision of common specialist services
- Support for greater research into the changing patterns of comorbidity
- Other (eg. combine drug and alcohol with mental health services)
5. Specialist workforce distribution:
- Incentives for psychologists and other non-medical mental health specialists to work in oorly resourced urban and rural areas
- Incentives for psychiatrists to work in poorly resourced urban and rural areas
- Support broadening of telemedicine strategies
- Limitation of new item numbers for psychiatrists in well-resourced urban areas
- Support e-health and other technology-based innovations in distribution of care
- Other (eg. Medicare item numbers for psychologists)
6. Development of community education and early intervention strategies:
- Development of primary-care based education and early-identification strategies
- Development of initiatives focusing on earlier identification of persons with psychotic disorders
- Development of initiatives focusing on earlier identification of teenagers with any significant behavioural disturbance
- Development of initiatives focusing on earlier identification of persons with non-psychotic disorders
- Other (eg. identification must lead to early intervention)
7. Development of a wider spectrum of acute and community care settings:
- Development of step-down acute care facilities (for use both prior to, and following, acute hospitalisation)
- General funding and agency support for community housing initiatives
Improved specialised support in association with primary care settings - Greater professional support within designated community housing
- Other (eg. greater resources for children and adolescents)
8. Innovation, research and evaluation:
- Support for improved modelling of the impacts of different types of mental health services
- Support for national application of regionally-successful innovations in care
- Support for national mental health literacy and attitude initiatives
- Support for national health services research initiatives
- Support for development of national standards of service data collection
- Support for e-health and telephone-based innovations in care
- Support for national biomedical research initiatives
- Other (eg. support for local research and innovations in care)
9. Increase national and regional mental health literacy campaigns:
- Support school-based mental health literacy campaigns
- Support workplace-based mental health literacy campaigns
- Support national advertising literacy campaigns
- Support Internet-based mental health literacy campaigns
- Other (eg. educate mental health volunteers)
10. Stigma reduction campaigns:
- Support for national stigma reduction campaigns
- Support for development of regional and local stigma reduction campaigns
- Prioritise stigma reduction amongst health care providers
- Support for stigma reduction focusing on psychotic disorders
- Support for stigma reduction focusing on non-psychotic disorders
- Other (eg. especially among children and adolescents)