Information for consumers/patients
Our Consumer Consultants are here to help you in many ways while you use the mental health program.
While finding out what services we have on offer can be a relatively simple task, finding out the answer to your questions regarding what rights, pathways or resources are available to you is not so easy. But at Southern Health there is someone to help you find your answers:
Consumer Consultants - we’re here for you!
A Consumer Consultant is someone just like you…someone who lives with a mental illness and has probably had many of the same experiences as you have.They can understand the frustration of not getting better quickly. They can appreciate the problems you have as an inpatient, and having to take medication and its side effects - because they have “lived experience”.
What do we do?
Consumer Consultants:- Develop ways in which staff and consumers (the people who use the service) can work together to improve what is already available and to plan for better services in the future.
- Encourage consumers to speak up and be involved in their treatment.
- Provide consumers with information that can assist them to be able to view their mental illness as they would any other illness. One from which they can recover, not as a permanent disability.
- Take consumer issues and concerns to management in an effort to improve services and give consumers a ‘real' voice.
Contact us
If you have any concerns or questions about the Mental Health System, such as resources regarding your legal rights whilst you are in hospital or general information on your options upon discharge including support within the community when you leave hospital please contact us.T: (03) 9554 1826
