Resource/Consultancy Service
To bring about a sensitive and consistent
response to WA's migrant mental health needs, the Centre continuously strives
to fulfil its role as a centre of expertise and resource in the field of transcultural
mental health.
The Centre responds to queries from other clinicians regarding patients' cultural issues related to mental
health in order that it may enhance their treatment efficacy. To assist us in this service provision,
the Centre has compiled a comprehensive database and collection of translated mental health resources
for clients and patients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, as well as relevant
resources that may be useful to service providers.
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Directory of Bicultural/Bilingual Mental Health
and General Practitioners
The Centre compiles and produces, on a regular basis, a Directory of Bicultural/Bilingual Mental Health
and General Practitioners to facilitate provision of mental health care to people from culturally
and linguistically diverse backgrounds in their preferred language(s). The 5th Edition of the Directory
of Bilingual/Bicultural Mental Health and General Practitioners was produced in partnership between the WA Transcultural
Mental Health Centre and the WA General Practice Network.
Guidelines and Protocols for Translated Mental
Health Resources
Guidelines and Protocols for
Translated Mental Health Resources (available as Microsoft
Word document, 482KB or PDF
document, 365KB) contains:
- a list of available resources for use with CALD populations and where they
are available from;
- protocols and guidelines by which the quality of resources can be judged;
- and a framework for identifying gaps and future resource needs.
This document is the final report
of a resource assessment project funded by the Office of Mental Health, Department
of Health, Western Australia.
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Mental Health Promotion
The Centre adopts a strong community
development approach in promoting mental health among CALD communities.The Centre
seeks to improve the level of mental health literacy among CALD communities,
and to increase awareness of risk factors to mental illness, as well as the
protective influences that might maintain one's mental health.
It would be simplistic to regard mental health promotion
as involving only delivery of information on specific
disorders, its symptoms and appropriate treatment..
Promoting mental health is about encouraging open, frank
discussions among community members and between community
members and mental health practitioners about mental
illness and mental health services. The underlying aim
for this mental health promotion approach is to "demystify"
mental illness, thereby addressing some of the stigma
attached to mental illness. One example of a mental
health promotion initiative is the Centre's participation
in the project: Preventing Family Disintegration
in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities.
The report
(PDF 697KB) is available for download. This initiative
was recognised by the National Australian Crime and
Violence Prevention Awards 2004. Further recognition
for the initiative has also come from the WA Department
of Community Development which committed $80,000 for
the project partners to replicate the initiative with
other ethnic communities. The findings from this second
phase of the project , Preventing
Family Disintegration in CALD communities: a partnership
approach which worked with the Sudanese, Somali
and West African communities in Perth, is available
for download
(PDF 443KB).
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Research
We pride ourselves in maintaining
a research agenda that is proactive, innovative and relevant to the mental health
need priorities of its target patient population. A principal objective is to
increase timely mental health service utilization by CALD community patients.
Our work seeks to identify the barriers to service access and during service
delivery; and to address the state of inadequacy with respect to the provision
of a culturally appropriate mental health service at all levels.
To date the Centre has engaged in epidemiological and
operational research on the psychiatric morbidity, risk
factors, and treatment outcomes of CALD background patients,
and on the quantity and quality of service provision
for this target population.
The national edition of The
Cultural Awareness Tool (CAT) is now available.
This project was conducted by the West Australian Transcultural
Mental Health Centre in collaboration with Curtin University
and RACGP in 1999-2000. The original version was distributed
in WA as part of this project.
The Clinician's Compendium of Assessment Tools for
Mental Health Clients from Culturally and Linguistically
Diverse (CALD) backgrounds was the result of a project
funded by the Office of Mental Health (WA). This compendium
describes available translated clinical assessment tools
and inventories, by language and by the culture for
which these have been validated; and reference to where
such instruments were subsequently produced. The Compendium
is now available from the Office of Mental Health, Department
of Health, Western Australia.
In collaboration with Murdoch University, the Department of Health and the West African community
in Perth, the Centre was involved in investigating how best to sensitively disseminate appropriate
strategies for maintaining good health and mental health behaviours among members of the West African Community.
The first phase of the project targeted sexual health knowledge. The resulting report from the first phase,
A Survey of Sexual Health Knowledge in Migrants and Refugees from West Africa, is a available from the
Centre. The West African Community voiced their need for the focus of this project to go beyond sexual health
to other health and mental health areas. The second phase of this project was completed in December 2007 and followed
a peer-education model of intervention. A report of the outcome of this second phase may be obtained upon request from
the Centre.
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Mental health services for CALD
communities are widely acknowledged to be fraught with deficits and a general
lack of understanding of relevant cultural-based issues that might enhance
service provision. The WA Transcultural Mental Health Centre has a role in
contributing to service development and the planning and development of programs
that will enhance service delivery by mental health service staff to people from
culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
Our collaborative links with other
service providers (government and non-government) in addition to our ongoing
liaison at the "grassroots" level enables the Centre to identify realistic,
pragmatic and need-responsive issues to be considered and addressed in service
planning and development.
From 1998 to 2005 the WA Transcultural Mental Health
Centre facilitated and acted as the secretariat to the
Multicultural
Forum for Mental Health Practitioners (PDF file
235KB). During its lifespan, the Forum developed the
Cultural Competency Standards and Audit Tool
– a tool for mental health services to assess
their level of cultural competency measured against
specifically developed cultural competency standards.
Copies of the Audit Tool are available from
the Mental Health Division at the Department of Health,
Western Australia.
All staff at the WA Transcultural
Mental Health Centre have a clinical background with wide experience in transcultural
mental health. The Centre offers a tertiary level clinical service to people
from CALD backgrounds, using interpreters, where necessary. Referrals are taken
secondary mental health services subsequent to a comprehensive assessment conducted
by the referring service.
Staff are available to offer expert
advice and information to assist service providers in their own management of
CALD background patients.
West Australian Transcultural Mental Health Centre
