Black Dog Institute’s short form webinars for mental health professionals have been very popular. We began trialling them 2 years ago thinking there would be people who’d appreciate their 30-minute format and their conversational style, and we’ve been forging on ever since. We’ve also been making podcasts based on the webinars so you don’t even have to stop what you are doing to listen.

Recent additions to the line up include an excellent half hour chat with psychologist Dr Sarah Barker and GP Dr Ceri Cashell about the mental health related aspects of the perimenopause and another very exciting offering with GP Dr Phoebe Holdenson Kimura and psychiatrist and NSW Mental Health Deputy Commissioner Dr Paul Fung about the silos in mental health care and what we can do to help break down the silos.

Don’t be disappointed – this webinar was not about hormones but specifically about the ways hormonal changes affect mental health. Dr Ceri (pron “Keri”) Cashell is a specialist GP who, amongst other things moderates a free online community of practice for practitioners and the general public interested in the impact of the menopause.

Ceri and Sarah discuss the definitions of menopause and perimenopause and identify the people with whom we should be having conversations about hormonal change. You might be surprised that the answer is that those conversations can be helpful for everyone, whatever their presentation, especially women in the 45-55 age group.

Symptoms of hormonal change can be cognitive (eg word finding difficulties and memory lapses) or emotional as well as physical. Increased irritability is common in the perimenopause. Ceri suggests jokingly that if the sound of your partner breathing throws you into a murderous rage you probably should consider that something is amiss!

It’s worth noting that the perimenopause coincides with an increased risk of addiction and is a peak period of suicidality for women.

Bottom line – if you are talking to any woman about her mental health, don’t forget to take a menstrual history!

Check out the webinar for more hints and information.

In the perimenopause webinar Dr Cachell said “Health care is a team sport”  and I think most people would agree – especially when it comes to mental health care.

The “Breaking Down the Silos” webinar attempts to address the problem of creating a team in mental health care.

Dr Phoebe Holdenson Kimura, whom you may remember from earlier Black Dog Institute / eMHPrac webinars, hosts this webinar, partly because she has been involved in a ground-breaking integrated care project which looks at a novel way to provide team care to general practice patients with mental health concerns.

Phoebe’s guest Dr Paul Fung is a psychiatrist by training but is also passionate about improving the delivery of mental health care. Paul was the recipient of The Paul Tys Churchill Fellowship, travelling in 2022 to the USA, UK and NZ to examine models of care that better integrate mental health care with general practice, and models that connect primary and secondary care. Amongst other things Paul is currently a Deputy Commissioner with the NSW Mental Health Commission. He is particularly concerned with fragmentation of care and equity of access for those for whom the social determinants make it difficult for them to access any kind of care.

On his travels on the Churchill fellowship Paul encountered the Primary Care Behavioural Health (PCBH) Model, and has developed a way of operationalising it in Australia.

Phoebe and Paul have collaborated on a project at Phoebe’s practice aimed at integrating general practice with the mental health care system based on the PCBH Model. It involves a mental health worker co-located in a general practice as a “well being clinician”, addressing the needs of those who might otherwise fly under the radar and maintaining their connection with the general practitioner.

You will be fascinated to hear how this PCBH model is working and perhaps even infused with optimism about the possibilities.

Here’s the link again to both these webinars

Keep an eye out for the podcasts which will appear on the Black Dog Institute website very soon and do let us know how you feel about the brief webinar format. We love it but the important thing is that you do too!