Rural mental health professionals face unique challenges – from professional isolation to high caseloads and limited peer support. But innovative solutions are emerging across regional Australia through the collaborative Manna Institute.
This virtual research institute brings together experts from seven universities within the Regional Universities Network (RUN) to carry out vital research with rural and regional communities. In partnership with local organisations, service providers and industry, people with lived experience and First Nations representatives, Manna is working to better understand the needs of rural and regional mental health professionals and developing strategies to sustain future workforces.
“The RUN network is producing the next generation of mental health professionals – the graduates who will practice professionally to support the needs of rural and regional communities,” said Manna Institute Director Professor Myfanwy Maple. “We are not only supporting the training of these students. We are also supporting the frontline workers and community members they are engaging with, so rural and regional people can access tailored care earlier and closer to home.”
Manna’s solutions are built from within communities, in co-operation with them. They recognise that a mental health workforce comprises people in addition to psychiatrists and psychologists.
“There’s an additional cohort that is rapidly growing – of non-clinical support providers – who have long been vital to the mental health workforce,” said Professor Maple. “They are trained to skilfully and safely use their own personal experiences and the knowledge gained through their recovery to support others.
“They may be in formal mental health peer worker roles, engaging directly with consumers or carers to deliver crisis and ongoing assistance and support. Others are peer advocates who facilitate support groups and maintain the community connections that are so crucial to recovery. All are working to improve lives, systems, research and policy.”
Manna is helping to grow this peer support workforce by supporting programs to embed peer connectors in existing mental health systems, developing career pathways for gaining mental health peer work qualifications, and piloting training through health disciplines in the RUN network. By exploring aspects of peer workforce development, including professional practice standards, roles and governance, Manna’s researchers are supporting the growth and development of the mental health peer workforce, connecting practitioners across vast distances and recognising their contributions.
“We are helping to drive workforce reform,” Professor Maple said. “Manna members in universities already training the future mental health workforce are well positioned to contribute to future professional development.
“We recognise that other disciplines are important to comprehensive mental health care, including social workers, mental health nurses and community pharmacists – professionals who meet people where they are at and work in prevention, early intervention and treatment/management.”
Manna is dedicated to long-term, place-based solutions that could help meet workforce shortfalls and ensure that people in regional communities with mental ill health are supported by people who understand them and the communities they live in.
“Manna members are deeply embedded in the communities they serve and are acutely aware of the workforce needs and regional contexts,” said Professor Maple. “By helping to build this home-grown mental health workforce, we are helping to build on community strengths, and alleviate mental distress and pressures on our over-stretched healthcare system.”
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