Multicultural Mental Health Australia
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Below are resources available to download in PDF format from the
MMHA
website
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LIFE fact sheet (available to download in 23 languages)
Synergy: MMHA's twice yearly newsletter
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Multicultural Mental Health Australia (MMHA) provides national leadership in building greater awareness of mental health and suicide prevention amongst Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
MMHA engages with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities, state and territory specialists, mainstream mental health services, government and non- government agencies and the tertiary sector to improve quality, responsiveness and access to mental health information and mental health services in CALD communities.
MMHA is funded under the National Mental Health Strategy and National Suicide Prevention Strategy of the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.
Aims
MMHA aims to set the direction in multicultural mental health across Australia. This includes engaging with communities and agencies, improving access to services, disseminating resources and promoting mental health in CALD communities.
Origins
MMHA was originally the National Transcultural Mental Health Network, which commenced in 1995. MMHA, as it is known today, originated in 1999.
While MMHA has forged unique partnerships with mental health agencies, professional groups, advocacy groups, and tertiary institutions over the years to actively promote the mental health and wellbeing of Australia’s CALD communities, the Coalition of Australian Governments (COAG) mental health initiatives of 2006, however, brought into play a range of new stakeholders, programs and services, funding sources and reforms in mental health. This forced MMHA to move with the times and implement new management processes to broaden its consultative mechanisms for the duration of the new funding period (2008-2011) so that it is fully and widely represented by all relevant stakeholders from across the nation.
Location
MMHA is a national program.
Activities
MMHA activities include:
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advocacy, advice to government on policy and service development;
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mental health promotion to CALD communities; and
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dissemination of resources.
These fit into priority areas such as carers and consumers, workforce development, community capacity building, communication, information, education and promotion and policy development.
Model
MMHA uses a model of collaboration and partnerships to address issues of transcultural mental health and suicide prevention. MMHA builds and maintains strategic alliances and networks which focus on:
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national mainstream programs;
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state and territory mental health services;
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state-wide specialist transcultural, refugee torture and trauma services;
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consumers and carers;
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the community sector; and
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the ethnic media.
Incorporating the LIFE Framework
MMHA supports the national LIFE Framework's acknowledgement that suicide prevention in CALD communities needs special consideration. In line with the LIFE Framework, MMHA agrees that people from CALD backgrounds:
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have higher suicide rates when living in Western countries than in their countries of birth;
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the stress on migrants of adapting to new cultural beliefs, language, values and customs and/or being separated from their culture and land of birth can increase the risks of suicide;
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the above stressors can be compounded for people from CALD backgrounds who are youth, elderly, socially isolated, suffer health problems or are unemployed; and
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people with refugee experiences face a higher risk of post traumatic stress disorder or depression and therefore may be at greater risk of suicide.
MMHA endorses the LIFE Framework’s statement that:
“…a significant number of people from CALD backgrounds do not seek help for their mental health problem, or are reluctant to do so. Often, they miss out on suicide support services because information is not available in community languages, or there is no culturally appropriate service available. They may also find it difficult to use mainstream services because of language and cultural barriers, [and] may be confused about how services operate, or simply unaware of the range of services and supports that are available.” (LIFE, 2008, p. 39)
Lessons Learnt
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There are no multilingual billboards promoting the importance of mental wellbeing and who to ring for help if one is suicidal, as we see for beyondblue, SANE and Lifeline.
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There are no multilingual mental health counselling Helplines for people who cannot speak English but may be feeling suicidal.
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There are no episodes dedicated to topics/subjects of mental illness in soapie television shows like Home and Away for people who cannot understand English, to normalise mental illness and gradually remove the stigma associated with it and with suicide.
Partners
Joint ventures with mainstream organisations include:
Collaborations and strategic partnerships with programs and organisations include:
Collaborations and partnerships with ethno-specific and multicultural organisations include:
Ongoing challenges
According to Georgia Zogalis, National Program Manager, MMHA targets a quarter of Australia’s population (those who are culturally and linguistically diverse) and this poses many ongoing challenges.
The mental health needs of CALD consumers and carers are often far harder to meet than those of the mainstream community due to the lack of adequate service provision and low mental health literacy levels. For example, only half of the nation has some sort of transcultural mental health service, and the four that exist differ significantly in both size, scope and service type (i.e. some provide clinical services while others only education).
Not many mainstream mental health organisations adequately address the needs of the CALD communities, so MMHA has the challenging task of trying to fill these large gaps nationwide. In an already short mental health workforce, it is difficult to find staff with the skills required for a national program in the specialised sectors of both mental health and multicultural areas.
Positive outcomes
Many positive outcomes have been achieved by the work of MMHA in the last decade and even more so since 2006 when the funding increased and program areas were funded to look at a variety of issues such as carers and consumers, workforce development, community capacity building, communication, information and media and partnerships and promotion.
The CALD community’s response to the multilingual resources produced by MMHA and the many human stories in local and ethnic media have provided very rewarding positive outcomes. Many people have contacted MMHA to express their thanks; some for first time acknowledging they have a mental illness. Many people have been touched by the stories of the consumers MMHA trained as Speakers to tell their personal recovery stories in their language.
Contact
Contact MMHA via
email
or ring (02) 9840 3333. For more information visit the MMHA website.