China has made great strides in mental health reform over over the past decade, rapidly implementing modern models of community care. AAMH is priovileged to be playing a small part in this enormous project for all of China (read more).
Already over 100 mental health workers and administrators have been trained in Melbourne since 2004. In addition, training intensives have been held in China for over 180 mental health professionals. The next training intensives are scheduled for Wuhan and Beijing in May 2008. The following three new AAMH partnerships will build on those efforts.
1. Tripartite 686 Community Mental Health Development Program
The objective of this program is to strengthen mental health care teams for the prevention and treatment of psychoses and to train staff in the development of community-based mental health services. Services covered include training in case management, case information collection, training of police and neighbourhood committees and family education.
2. AusAID funded Protecting Children in Disasters project
This will support educators, parents and local communities in developing simple procedures to protect the mental health of children during and after natural or man -made disasters. Resources developed will be culturally relevant and the project will have the capacity to be rolled out in other countries.
3. Depression Initiative
A partnership with the Chinese Psychiatric Association, UTS Institute of International Studies and beyondblue, Australia's national Depression initiative, this program aims at raising community awareness on the existence of and understanding of depression . It fights stigmatisation of depression sufferers and will include the translation into Chinese of existing BeyondBlue information and guidelines and posting them on to Chinese websites.
China is also actively involved in the Asia-Pacific Community Mental Health Development Project.
Read more about the history of AAMH's collaboration with China.
View a list of the delegation members from China that AAMH has hosted.