Our
Services
Individual Therapy
We support adults, utilising talk-based therapies through 1 hour individual sessions.
Making use of brain-based psycho-education and interventions in line with the most current research, we help you learn about how your brain works, support you to understand your emotional and behavioural responses, and integrate daily techniques and tools.
Our practice aims to reduce the stigma of managing your mental health, and ensuring you feel you can gain support through any life changes, such as:
-
Supporting adjustment and life transitions
-
Managing daily stress
-
Working through relationship difficulties
-
Seeking clarification around life decisions
-
Clarifying employment/university direction
-
Improving sense of confidence
We are also skilled in managing any mental health concerns, inclusive of:
-
Anxiety
-
Depression
-
Trauma
-
Grief & loss
-
Substance Dependance
-
Personality Disorders
-
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
MHA offers video or phone sessions if you are located remotely or have circumstances that affect your ability to attend in person. Please read below for more information.
Child & Parenting Support
Parents and caregivers often bring their child to therapy for emotional, social, and behavioural support. Working with children often involves working with their caregivers and their families to ensure sustainable therapeutic outcomes.
There are many benefits of counselling for children and their families. Therapy can assist parents and children to learn new skills and ways to communicate in the family, build emotional regulation, and facilitate positive changes in the brain within a safe, expressive, and contained environment.
MHA offers support to children, parents and families with concerns relating to:
-
Behavioural and learning difficulties
-
School refusal
-
Concentration difficulties
-
Difficulties with excessive technology use
-
Social skills / bullying concerns
-
Problems with sleep
-
Symptoms of anxiety or depression
-
Trauma
-
Family separation
-
Anger and aggression
-
Sexualised behaviour
-
Protective behaviours
-
Adjustment/Coping with separation
-
Attachment and relationship difficulties
-
Parental difficulties and concerns
-
Sensory disorders
-
Autism Spectrum Disorder
-
Oppositional Defiance Disorder
-
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Once a parent intake session is completed with one of our therapists, your child will have one-on-one play and expressive therapy counselling sessions to work through their concerns and learn effective emotional regulation strategies and tools. We work closely with you as the parent to provide feedback on how your child is going in therapy, and will also teach you strategies learned in sessions so that skills can be translated from the counselling context to home and school.
Adolescent Therapy
We support adolescents, utilising talk-based therapies through 45 minute individual sessions.
Adolescence is a stage of heightened creativity and emotions and a significant transitional phase of life. A young person experiences profound and rapid changes during adolescence: physically, cognitively, emotionally, neurobiologically, and socially. While this time can be enriching, there can be many challenges, leading to feelings of confusion, frustration, loneliness, anger, sadness, shame and anxiety, not only for the adolescent but also for their family as they navigate the intensity of this time together.
Addressing any emerging mental health concerns through holistic counselling support during this time is paramount for the young person to learn how to effectively manage stressors and transition into adulthood.
Our therapists have extensive experience in working with adolescents in the following areas:
-
Anxiety, depression and stress
-
School refusal
-
Relationships and relational wellness
-
Family separation
-
Peer pressure
-
Sexual health, sexuality and gender identity affirmation
-
Substance dependance
-
Communication issues
-
Difficulties with excessive technology use
-
Bullying and cyber-bullying
-
Self-harm and suicidal thoughts/feelings
-
Academic achievement
-
Study-related stress
-
Sleep disturbance
-
Anger and aggression
-
Grief and loss
-
Life transitions
-
Self-esteem, identity and personal development
-
Impact of trauma and abuse
Expressive Therapies
Expressive therapies can involve using play, art, movement sandtray/symbol work, and other creative techniques to draw out and explore our intentions, feelings, and the patterns that we have developed in our lives. It is a powerful way to learn how we operate as individuals and how we can move towards positive change. Often our feelings and experiences are hidden in our unconscious minds. We then repeat unhelpful patterns, or repeat behaviours without being aware of the causes or how to make changes. Using expressive therapies is an effective way for us to make the unconscious, conscious.
Expressive therapies assist to link our emotional brains (limbic system) to our hippocampus (memory system) and thinking brains (frontal cortex) to allow for expression, exploration, facilitation of new neural networks, and healing. With this modality we can also help to integrate the left and right hemispheres of our cortex, which is particularly helpful for individuals who have experienced trauma.
Expressive therapies work effectively with adults and young people, and is particularly helpful with children. Play is children’s first and natural language, and provides a safe and self-guided way for children to express and process their feelings. Children often do not have the verbal skills to express how they are feeling. The toys and art resources in the therapy room are carefully chosen to engage the child’s interest, and to allow facilitation of creative and emotional expression without verbalisation. If your child has experienced trauma, expressive therapies can be beneficial. Research has shown that through modalities such as play and art, children are able to tap into, express and process their traumatic experiences through a medium that is gentle and accessible.
Online Services
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic or if you are located in a remote community you may choose to access a virtual therapy session instead of attending the practice in person.
Mental Healthcare Australia is fully equipped to offer Virtual sessions. These are online sessions conducted via video or phone conferencing. We utilise a highly secure and confidential video conferencing program, but one that is easy to use and requires no prior set-up.
Research studies have found Virtual treatment effectiveness to be equivalent to that of face to face. Although some may feel apprehensive about adjusting to a session conducted online, there are a few benefits from accessing therapy online to consider:
-
You are located in a familiar, comforting and relaxed environment of your own home
-
Improved ease, convenience & accessibility for sessions; increasing your ability to sustain consistent therapy engagement
-
For some it can feel less confronting and anxiety-inducing to begin their therapy via online
-
Reduced external stressors like travel, traffic, parking, or the additional required social interactions
NDIS
Thanks to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), the participants can choose the type of counselling they want to undergo to resolve their mental health issues.
With the NDIS, the participant is in control of choosing the services that are most suitable to their needs and goals, including how the services will be delivered and where it will be done. Each of the services provided can be tailored to a participant’s specific requirements and can be changed as required.
When working with Mental Healthcare Australia, you usually start by sharing what your short and long term goals are. Together with the service provider, you can create a plan that suits your specific goals and aspirations. A great way to measure progress is to acknowledge each achievement and milestone as you reach them. Your service providers are always adjusted along the way to reflect your achievements. MHA offers a range of services that can all be a part of your NDIS Plan:
-
Individual Counselling (including in-home counselling);
-
and Community Engagement Assistance.
Accessing counselling through the NDIS will ensure that the support you received will be tailored to suit your needs while the quality of the service is not compromised. As you receive your individualised funding through the NDIS, you have control over which support services will be available to you. If you have decided counselling is one of the services you would like to include, you can work with your NDIS support worker and Mental Healthcare Australia to determine how many sessions would be of most benefit to you.
Deciding to seek the help of a counsellor can be daunting and a little scary at first. At Mental Healthcare Australia, we can help make that first step a little easier.
Mental Healthcare Australia operates on the land of the Darumbal Peoples. Sovereignty never ceded. We acknowledge the People who are the traditional custodians of this land. We pay respect to the Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations’ Peoples. We are committed to honouring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ wisdom, heritage, beliefs and continued connection to Country.
