Rural mental health findings to be released

Dr Delwar Hossain has been leading a team researching mental health in rural and remote regions

A team of researchers led by Dr Delwar Hossain, from the University of Southern Queensland’s (USQ) Centre for Rural and Remote Area Health (CRRAH) have been looking at how primary producers and rural communities recover from the devastating effects of natural disasters.

Now, after completing 12 workshops in Warwick, Dalby, Kingaroy, Goondiwindi, Dirranbandi, St George, Mitchell, Roma, Miles, Chinchilla, Charleville and Cunnamulla the team are preparing to release the results of their findings.

´The purpose of this project is to better understand the capacity building needs of rural producers and their communities to effectively address mental health issues in the face of increasing uncertainty with climate variability and change,” Dr Hossian said.

In each community local residents were invited to take part in the workshops. From primary producers, land care groups and local emergency service people, to schools, health care workers and rural financial counsellors, the workshops were attended by a broad cross section of the community.

“A common theme that has emerged from the workshops is that rural people and their surrounding communities are under sustained stress resulting from a mix of droughts, floods, off season’s rain, mining, vegetation and water policy. All were seen to impact on mental health and community well being. Remote male producers were particularly identified as vulnerable and difficult to engage or support,” Dr Hossain said.

“A wide range of services and initiatives from government, non-government and the community have been identified during the workshops. A community initiative of note was the Tie up the Black Dog program which has held events throughout the region and used sports stars and others to entice men to activities.

“We found that costs are an issue in reproducing and continuing the momentum across the region. Despite existing resources, gaps and needs remain if capacity is to be built and maintained to manage mental health issues.

“A number of activities were identified during the workshops where social capacity could be built within existing resources. This included greater networking and collaborations between agencies and groups concerned with mental health issues and collating information about and promoting services and pathways to residents to gain information and assistance.

Dr Hossain said the team found there was a high level of interest in obtaining skills in Mental Health First Aid – with suggestions that providing such skills across the community could strengthen the community’s capacity to recognise and address issues as they emerged.

“There was also a belief that such awareness and training could be better incorporated into other activities being run within the communities – for example when an agronomy workshop was run, or in conjunction with Chamber of Commerce activities etc. The key would be to have materials readily available that could be adapted and used in these contexts and to have deliverers with sufficient training to effectively address the issues as well as their technical concerns.”

A key issue has been to establish opportunities for Collaborative Partnership for Farming and Fishing Health and Safety Programs to pilot/implement capacity building activities for rural communities to manage mental health issues.

The research was in part funded by the Collaborative Partnership for Farming and Fishing Health and Safety Program and managed by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), Rhealth, Centacare, QMDC, and the Rod Saal Trust.

After each workshop a report was written, sent to the participants for further comment or correction and then placed on a blog site. Participants were then able to read about their own workshop, as well as the other eleven and follow developments with the project and develop cross-linkages between the communities.

Dr Hossain also said in addition to this a survey has been designed to be either posted or emailed to the people who were interested in the workshops, but were unable to attend. These surveys have also been distributed at local cattle sales or left with rural financial counsellors.

“The data is currently being processed and after the analysis the framework for action research to build the capacity of the rural and remote community will be proposed to RIRDC.”

Contact Details:
Connie-Louise Rego, USQ Media, +61 7 4631 2977
19/07/2011