Psychology Clinic continues to serve community

September 10, 2007

The University of New England Psychology Clinic has been successful in renewing its contract with the New England Division of General Practice to provide clinical psychology services to people in Armidale and the surrounding region. This means that, for the fifth successive year, the UNE Psychology Clinic will be offering free clinical psychology services to people referred to it by GPs within the New England Division.

Dr Barbara Visser, Coordinator of the UNE Psychology Clinic, said that since its inception in 2003 the program had allowed the Clinic to provide services to more than 450 patients in Armidale, Glen Innes and Inverell. "Patients were referred for a range of problems, including depression, various anxiety disorders, and substance abuse," Dr Visser said, "with many of them receiving up to 12 weekly consultations of an hour each."

UNE's Associate Professor Nigel Marsh, one of the three supervising clinical psychologists working in the Clinic, said the program was a successful example of recent Federal Government initiatives to increase the availability of specialised mental health services for people living in rural areas.

"The Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing provides funding through the Better Outcomes in Mental Health Care program to the New England Division of General Practice, enabling it to purchase clinical psychology services from the UNE Psychology Clinic," Dr Marsh explained. "This unique collaboration between the Division and the Clinic allows local GPs to obtain specialised mental health services for their patients. Evaluation by both GPs and patients has repeatedly indicated high levels of satisfaction with the service the Clinic provides."

"The collaboration has been successful enough to attract national attention," he added. "Dr Visser was invited to present a paper, at this month's annual meeting of the Directors of Australian and New Zealand University Psychology Training Clinics in Brisbane, on the process of establishing and maintaining the collaborative agreement."

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows two of the UNE Psychology Clinic's three supervising clinical psychologists: Dr Barbara Visser (front) and Debra Dunstan. The photograph expands to include the third member of the team: Associate Professor Nigel Marsh.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at September 10, 2007 04:16 PM