Healthy Minds is a free counselling service for people experiencing mild to moderate mental health concerns, and who are unable to afford services provided by mental health practitioners in private practice.
To be eligible, people must fit into one of the priority groups and be currently experiencing financial distress.
Healthy Minds Priority Groups include:
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (ATSI).
- People from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds (CALD).
- Children up to the age of 12. Children should be experiencing, or at risk of developing an emotional or behavioural disorder.
- Homelessness or people at risk of becoming homeless.
- Perinatal women from 20 weeks up until one year after giving birth. (PERI)
- People at moderate risk of suicide and/or self-harm (SPS).
Eligible people receive 12 counselling sessions (18 for Suicide Prevention Service), usually 60 mins in duration, with a mental health practitioner such as a psychologist or mental health nurse or social worker. In these sessions people are provided with strategies and techniques to manage their mental health concerns.
To improve accessibility to mental health treatment, Healthy Minds services are delivered in a variety of settings including community organisations, medical centres (including Aboriginal Medical Services) and the private rooms of mental health practitioners. In some cases, home visits are available.
Mental health practitioners include psychologists, mental health social workers, mental health nurses, mental health occupational therapists and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers. Healthy Minds practitioners have agreed not to charge a gap fee, thus there is no cost for the person to receive Healthy Minds services.
Referral forms can be accessed via the Connect To Wellbeing page: click here
Healthy Minds is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health, using both ATAPS (Access to Allied Psychological Services) and Better Access.
Click here to visit the HealthPathway for Psychological Therapy.
For a list of all localised pathways see:
Mid and North Coast Localised Pathways
Username: manchealth
Password: conn3ct3d
For further information about HealthPathways email [email protected] or [email protected].
Information on this page is no longer current. For the latest on Healthy Minds referrals, click here.