Digital mental health resources and services continue to play a vital role in providing mental health and wellbeing support to Australians, especially for those affected by domestic violence. These services offer easily accessible help, providing crucial information, prevention strategies, assessments, diagnoses, counselling, and treatment. They also complement face-to-face therapies by enabling care providers to focus on complex cases and supporting people on waitlists.

However, the task of finding relevant evidence-based services can be overwhelming. To address this challenge, the eMHPrac (e-Mental Health in Practice) program was funded by the Australian Government to provide free training and guidance to health practitioners nationwide about free and low-cost digital mental health services. eMHPrac offers training through awareness presentations, webinars, online modules, podcasts, newsletters and a range of downloadable and printed materials. The program is led by Queensland University of Technology in collaboration with Black Dog Institute, Menzies School of Health Research and University Centre for Rural Health, University of Sydney.

Within the realm of domestic violence issues and mental health care, eMHPrac provides invaluable guidance for health practitioners seeking online support for clients. This presentation will outline how to find relevant evidence-based digital mental health services and resources, ranging from helplines to online programs, moderated forums and apps. Additionally, it will provide insights into quality assurance considerations and how a practitioner or support person can best utilise the service or resource for the wellbeing of their client.

In recent years there has been growing recognition of LGBTIQ+ people’s experience family, domestic and sexual violence, and the need for strong efforts to prevent and respond to this violence.

This has led to increasing understanding of the shared drivers of this violence as well as men’s violence against women.

We will provide an overview of Rainbow Health Australia’s work in primary prevention of LGBTIQ family violence, and how it applies to those working in frontline service delivery.

This session will share the learnings of Rainbow Health Australia’s suite of Pride in Prevention guides, including the drivers of family violence experienced by LGBTIQ communities and priority interventions to address it. Pride in Prevention explores the shared drivers of violence against women and violence against LGBTIQ people – rigid gender roles, cisnormativity and heteronormativity.

We will explore topics including:
- How heteronormativity drives violence for LGBTIQ people and non LGBTIQ people
- Where inclusion and primary prevention do and don’t overlap
- How response workers can contribute to primary prevention efforts
- Why we can't do LGBTIQ primary prevention without the PVAW sector (and vice versa!)

Key Learnings:

1. Enhance understanding of primary prevention and the shared drivers of violence against women (cisgender, heterosexual) and violence against LGBTIQ people.

2. Deepen understanding of how response workers can contribute to LGBTIQ primary prevention.

3. Identify opportunities for cross-sector mutual reinforcement and collaboration between FV and LGBTIQ sectors.