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Mental health literacy

Good mental health literacy is about having the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to promote mental health and reduce to impact of mental illness. This includes enhancing understanding of mental disorders to aid their recognition, management and prevention.

Enhanced mental health literacy training

Mental health literacy training has become a key strategy for enhancing mental health literacy. The majority of this training is concerned with increasing knowledge of common mental health conditions and effective ways to respond in a crisis.

There has been significant investment in mental health literacy training capacity across Queensland, particularly in the Mental Health First Aid training.

There is a need to ensure that these investments are meeting community needs and that the training being delivered is of high quality and available across the state.

In 2016, the Commission engaged Open Minds to review mental health literacy training programs in Queensland with a focus on Mental Health First Aid. The Project will:

  • audit and summarise current mental health literacy capacity and training in Queensland
  • propose a framework for regional coordination and quality assurance for future training.

A final report with recommendations for future directions is expected in 2017.