Public health update: Stay alert for meningococcal symptoms. Read more.

Hide

Mental Health and Alcohol and Other Drugs Action Plan

12 May 2021

We are thrilled to launch the Mental Health and Alcohol and Other Drugs Action Plan with you today!  

CESPHN recognises that people who experience co-occurring mental health and drug and alcohol conditions can experience barriers to effective service provision. 

We have worked in partnership with the Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, to understand the experiences of people who seek services as well as health care providers. 

The research has delivered important recommendations for increasing the capacity of the workforce to respond to people with co-occurring needs.
 
With the launch of the National Comorbidity Guidelines and training by the Matilda Centre, we saw a timely opportunity to leverage the introduction of these resources and further the objective to build workforce capacity.

We convened a region-wide working party to progress this work in partnership with stakeholders across the region with a shared vision to achieve genuine change. Together with the Matilda Centre, lived experience workers, practitioners in public and NGO services, GPs, pharmacists, sector peaks, researchers and educators, developed an action plan to build system and workforce capacity to deliver holistic and integrated care that focuses on treating the person, not the illness.