Page 2908 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 12 October 2022
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The ACT government is proud to work with community organisations and clinical services within the mental health sector and holds these partnerships in high esteem. The work done every day by our mental health sector, particularly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic period, has been vital to maintaining the community’s mental health and wellbeing and continues to support us all as we experience the ongoing effects of the pandemic. On behalf of the ACT government, I would like to personally thank the whole of the ACT mental health sector for their work to support us all during this time and recognise that this work has been and continues to be invaluable to our community.
Something we have all learnt throughout the pandemic, as well as through our community’s recovery from increasingly more common extreme weather events such as the 2020 hailstorm and 2022 supercell storm and the bushfires of the summer of 2019/2020, is the importance of working together. We have seen extraordinary acts of kindness across our community as people have offered a hand of friendship and support to those who have been hardest hit by environmental, health or economic disasters. These connections have strengthened our community and helped protect those most at risk.
So, too, is the strengthening effect of working together to support mental health and wellbeing. The ACT government continues to work with and support the mental health sector to improve mental health and wellbeing in the ACT community. This is being done through initiatives from the Office for Mental Health and Wellbeing and the ACT Health Directorate with assistance from the commonwealth government, such as the MindMap Youth Portal, a dedicated 24/7 online portal for children and young people to help them navigate Canberra’s mental health system.
MindMap supports young people and their families or carers with a deeper awareness of the diversity of mental health conditions, as well as connection to services that can help. Importantly, it also provides connection to youth navigators who can hold the space for young people while they wait for their first appointment.
The Youth Aware of Mental Health Program, YAM, also continues to provide an evidence-based mental health and suicide prevention program designed to build resilience and mental health literacy in young people aged 14 to 16 years. I am very pleased to say that it has helped thousands of young people, around 2,700 year 9 students each year, who tell me they now have greater awareness of mental wellbeing and managing stress and anxiety and supporting their friends.
The Expanding Public Healthcare Services for Eating Disorders Project, which collaborates with clinical and community services to improve and expand eating disorder services in the ACT, has included the development of the Clinical Hub for Eating Disorders. The Clinical Hub is a centralised point of access to support people with an eating disorder across the full spectrum of care to engage in the best treatment for an eating disorder when and where they need it. It includes connection to the STRIDE, Short Term Recovery Intervention for Disordered Eating, program, and the Eating Disorder Program, as well as a parenting group for the families of people with eating disorders.
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