Mental health

Programs and services funded by EMPHN are designed to put the patient at the centre of care, ensuring that they are culturally safe, accessible and involve shared decision making. It is recognised that the community within the catchment has a diverse range of needs, which require collaborative support from service partners, general practitioners, specialists, support staff and peer workers.

Across the region, with our service partners, EMPHN delivered a number of programs including:

• After Hours Mental Health Nursing Service: This service provides free, accessible mental health support outside standard hours 6–11pm weekdays and 2–7pm weekends/public holidays. The program offers brief interventions, assessments, and referrals for individuals experiencing mild to moderate mental health concerns such as stress, anxiety, or grief.
• Enhancing Mental Health Services in Secondary Schools (EMHSS): The program improves access to early intervention mental health support for Victorian government secondary school students by providing free counselling and related services through local headspace centres and school partnerships.
• Head to Health Hubs: Provides access to multidisciplinary teams of mental health workers, including psychologists, nurses, social workers and peer workers. The Hubs provide a flexible model of care tailored to the person, recognising that people have different mental health care needs at different times. 
• headspace: headspace centres act as a one-stop shop for young people with mental health and wellbeing concerns, providing access to youth-friendly health professionals in a safe, confidential and youth-friendly environment. The purpose of the program is to provide no cost, youth friendly, holistic care to young people aged 12-25.
• Medicare Mental Health phone line: A free service that connects consumers with the mental health support that is right for them. The national service is staffed by experienced mental health professionals who will listen to needs and match consumers with support options tailored to individual needs. Staffed by experienced mental health professionals. 
• Psychosocial Support Program: The service helps people build social skills, navigating relationships, managing money, looking for and after a home, building skills and qualifications, and developing work goals. 
• Stepped Care: A staged system of support that matches the intensity of services to a person’s needs, allowing for flexibility and responsiveness as those needs change. Offering a spectrum of interventions, from low-intensity options like self-help and peer support to high-intensity clinical treatments such as psychiatric care and hospitalisation. 
• Support following suicide: Postvention, bereavement counselling and support groups to people in the region who have been affected by suicide. 
• Youth Enhanced: Also known as BounceBack, provides specialist mental health treatment and support for young people aged 12-25 experiencing complex mental health challenges, helping them access care that sits between primary care and tertiary mental health services.
  

people supported by Stepped Care through 12,279 consumer hours

inbound calls received to the Medicare Mental Health phone line

individual counselling sessions and 381 group sessions delivered to support people after a suicide

occasions of service delivered to young people at headspace

episodes of service delivered by the After Hours Mental Health Nursing Service