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by the staff that control them, according to the Digital Navigation Project’s sector research. In the words of one SANE online community member who contributed to the Project, the problem is akin to “trying to find a word in the dictionary when you don’t know what letter the word starts with.” To better comprehend the help-seeker experience, the Project included a participatory approach involving a survey of over 1,300 people. According to Professor Nicola Reavley, Research Director at the SANE Anne Deveson Research Collaborative, this survey was roughly proportional to the Australian population. It also provided a representative sample of socio-demographic factors such as age, gender, location and cultural and linguistic diversity. “We found that around two-thirds of respondents had a high need for support but low confidence in finding it – despite widespread promotion of common help- seeking messages to visit the GP or a psychologist,” said Professor Reavley, who is also Deputy Director of the Centre for Mental Health and Community Wellbeing at the University of Melbourne. A high proportion of survey participants had been seeking help for between 1–5 years, or for more than five years. Free and affordable services that have availability, and that are aligned to people’s needs, all emerged as the highest priorities for help-seekers in the survey.
by mental health consumers as a ‘Google loop of despair’.
Mapping the extent of the problem
Enter Digital Navigation – the largest and most comprehensive project to date into the barriers people face when trying to access mental health support. Commissioned by the Australian Department of Health and led by SANE Australia, in partnership with global management consultancy, Nous Group and a consortium of expert sector organisations, the Digital Navigation Project was ambitious in both scale and impact. Over nine months, it sought to answer a deceptively simple question: why is it so hard to find and access the right help at the right time? More than 2,000 stakeholders across Australia shared their learnings, experiences and potential solutions, with the project capturing the voices of mental health consumers, carers, service providers and other subject matter experts.
Jeanette Chan
“There’s fundamentally a lack of diversity in the care pathways available. All roads lead to ad hoc crisis services or the GP, which is costly for health services to deliver and often involves long wait times for treatment. “This is particularly problematic for people with intersecting needs, who might be dealing with more than one diagnosis at a time and don’t know which pathway to address first.” Many digital mental health directories and services also replicate analogue information online, making it harder for help- seekers to discern what’s best for them — what Green calls the ‘bundle of brochures’ problem. “Unfortunately, this help-seeking experience is leading to significant delays in people finding and accessing appropriate care, resulting in poorer outcomes and unnecessary strain on acute services that are already struggling to cope with demand.” At best, help-seekers feel confused and disillusioned by the help- seeking experience. At worst, they feel traumatised by the process — leading to a situation dubbed
Understanding help- seekers’ needs At a time of information
overload, when articles and factsheets about any number of mental health conditions are available at the swipe of a screen, it’s clear that access to appropriate treatment and support is still frustratingly hard to find for people experiencing mental health challenges. Further complicating the situation is the fact that approximately 83% of digital mental health directories are manually updated
“What people really need is to see what help exists for
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