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St. Vincent's Mental Health

Service description

St. Vincent's Mental Health is responsible for the management of an adult area mental health service including:

• A 44 bed acute inpatient service

• Two community mental health services (Clarendon and Hawthorn) with approximately 350 registered consumers receiving services from each

• A 20 bed community care unit and extended residential rehabilitation service

• Specialist services

• St. Vincent's Mental Health also provides specialist services on a regional or statewide basis. 

Acute Inpatient Service

This is a 44 bed adult acute inpatient unit, located at St. Vincent's Hospital, Fitzroy which is a public tertiary teaching hospital. The adult acute inpatient unit includes an extra care unit for people with more intensive care needs.

These services provide short-term inpatient treatment during an acute phase of mental illness until the person has recovered sufficiently to be treated effectively in a community-based setting.

Treatment is planned and provided by a team that includes psychiatrists, psychiatry registrars / medical officers, psychiatric nurses, social workers, psychologists, pharmacists and occupational therapists, as well as case-managers from the community clinics.

The Victorian Aboriginal Health Service has access to five mental health inpatient beds at St. Vincent's Mental Health for Koori patients from across Victoria.

Psychiatric Triage: Psychiatric Triage provides advice and screening assessment for all new referrals to the service on a 24 hour, 7 day per week basis.

Community Mental Health Services

Clarendon Community Mental Health Service and Hawthorn Community Mental Health Service  provide services within an integrated system of multidisciplinary care, that connects the following components:

Continuing Care, Clinical & Consultancy Service: provides ongoing specialist care and support with the focus on meeting identified needs of clients through a range of clinical and therapeutic interventions.

Crisis Assessment and Treatment Service (CATS): offers psychiatric assessment and intensive community-based treatment to people in the acute phase of psychiatric illness.

Mobile Support and Treatment Service (MSTS): provides intensive ongoing support, rehabilitation and treatment to people in their own surroundings.

Homeless Service: provides acute assessment and case-management for people with a mental illness who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

Shared care arrangements: Collaborative partnerships of community mental health staff with private psychiatrists and GPs provide coordinated care.

The Footbridge  (Community Care Unit)

The Footbridge is a community residential service providing nursing/allied health support 24 hours a day.

Care is provided to 20 residents in a “homelike” setting with the aim of improving the residents’ community living skills, independence and maximising their quality of life.

Specialist Services

The Yarra-Boroondara Primary Mental Health Service provides education and support to primary health care providers treating people with high prevalence disorders such as depression and anxiety, or young people at risk of developing serious mental illness.  The service is based at local Community Health Centres but sees people at the site of their primary care provider (eg GP surgery).

The Consultation & Liaison Psychiatry Service assists with psychiatric assessment and management of general medical and surgical patients at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

Victorian Dual Disability Service (VDDS) provides assessment, staff education and tertiary consultation to Victorian Area Mental Health Services for those individuals with intellectual disability and mental illness. http://www.vdds.org.au/

Nexus Dual Diagnosis Service (Northern Nexus) provides assessment, staff education and tertiary consultation to staff of mental health services and drug and alcohol services about consumers with both mental illness and drug and alcohol problems.

Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit (VTPU) works for the improvement of mental health services for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD). It is a state-wide service which develops policy and encourages clinical services to provide relevant, appropriate and acceptable services to members of CALD communities. It provides clinical training to mental health staff and to trainees in the medical and allied health professions, and conducts research into the mental health issues affecting CALD communities and relevant service responses.   www.vtpu.org.au