Multidisciplinary co-design of innovative, client-centred models for Indigenous mental health services in South East Queensland
Improving Indigenous clients’ timely access to culturally appropriate, safe healthcare services for the prevention, treatment and management of mental health issues.
Unjust Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander mental health inequities exist in Australia. Closing the ‘Indigenous mental health gap’ is an urgent national priority. There is a dearth of information about how urban Indigenous people use mental health services, what their service needs are, and how to innovate new solutions to mental health inequities. For the first time in Australia, working with two of the country’s largest urban health services, the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health and the Metro North Hospital and Health Service, we will deliver an innovative, transdisciplinary study that shifts the focus away from measuring mental health gaps, towards the co-design of feasible, whole-of-health-system approaches to eliminate inequities in service access and provision, and outcomes for Indigenous people in South East Queensland (SEQ).
Using a socio-ecological model to analyse the interpersonal, institutional, community and system-based influences on people’s health seeking practices, we will:
- Determine prevalence of mental health issues among Indigenous people in SEQ, the types of mental health services used, and the interpersonal, institutional, community and system-based factors that enhance or inhibit timely access to these services
- Examine access to mental health services, and determine the effect of the built urban environment on Indigenous clients’ service engagement
- Determine gaps in service access and resourcing for Indigenous clients needing mental health care and identify the highest priority service gaps across different populations and service types
- Co-design new, feasible, innovative, client-centred models for mental health services in community settings, ACCHSs and government health services through co-production of new models of care, this study will lead to a breakthrough in the way client-centred models of care for mental health are conceived, developed and planned, centred in Indigenous worldviews, experiences and expertise.
MRFF Indigenous Health Research
October 2022 – September 2025