I went along to this two day workshop recently here in Alice and found it well worthwhile. All members of the community would benefit from this standing alongside First Aid and like it has an action acronym. Undoubtedly courses like this help with the fear and stigma generally associated with mental health.
Mental health it seems unfortunately is an increasing or more recognized problem that is under-resourced. This was highlighted in the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission Report.
This award-winning course is available nationally and if you look up the website (www.mhfa.com.au) you’ll be able to see where and when to access it.
Crisis situations of suicidal behaviours, acute stress reaction, panic attacks and acute psychotic behaviour are covered, as are depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
- Vicki Gordon
The new year has started and our schedule is busier than ever. Some new and exciting things are happening this year to complement the MEC course. We are currently developing a midwifery up-skilling course called MIDUS to provide all the midwives working in remote and isolated areas with some education. This has come about because of the requests from many midwives who have said “what about us - we need education too” when they find out the MEC course is primarily aimed at non-midwives. So we will trial four new MIDUS courses in the 1st half of the year. They will be a similar format to the MEC - consisting of a manual and weekend workshop. The content and manual will be a work in progress during the trial period and an evaluation will be conducted in June to determine the feasibility and sustainability of the course. Whether the course continues after June 2010 will depend on our funding body - DOHA - agreeing to provide further funding for it.
We also have an Online Education program being developed as we speak, to provide ongoing educational tools to support all of our current courses. You will hear more abut this as the content becomes available.
So back to MEC - we kick off with a course in Bruny Island mid February. I’m hoping for good weather but even if its not so good it is nice to see the ocean. Being a resident of rural country Victoria i don’t see it often enough! I’ll post some photos from there after the course.
If anyone has an interesting birth story or a pregnancy complication from their work in remote or rural Australia that highlights the skills we teach in MEC please post it here (no identifying details please) or email me at mec@crana.org.au.
Cheers
Caitlin
