The mental health of pastors is a critical yet often underexplored aspect of church leadership, significantly influencing the quality of congregational care. Pastors are entrusted with profound responsibilities, including providing spiritual guidance, emotional support, and crisis management. However, the unique pressures of pastoral roles—such as emotional labor, the weight of moral authority, and high community expectations—can lead to mental health challenges, including burnout, anxiety, and depression. These issues not only affect pastors' well-being but also have far-reaching consequences for their congregations.
Mental health struggles can impair a pastor's ability to connect with congregants, manage conflicts, and foster a supportive community environment. Signs of distress may manifest as irritability, withdrawal, or poor decision-making, potentially eroding trust and diminishing the overall health of the church. Moreover, unresolved mental health issues can create fertile ground for spiritual abuse, where pastors may exploit their authority in harmful ways.
Understanding the risks associated with pastoral mental health is essential for churches aiming to cultivate healthier environments. This presentation explores the interplay between pastoral mental health and congregational care, highlighting key risks such as spiritual abuse, burnout, and the overall impact on church dynamics.
To address these challenges, this presentation proposes a series of preventive strategies, including education and awareness initiatives, the establishment of support networks, promoting work-life balance, and fostering open communication within congregations. By prioritizing the mental health of pastors and implementing effective support systems, faith communities can enhance the quality of care provided to congregants and create a resilient, nurturing church environment. This proactive approach not only benefits pastors but ultimately strengthens the entire faith community.

This presentation examines the adoption and use of Feedback Informed Treatment (FIT) within the University Counselling Services (UCS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). FIT has been instrument UCS has implemented with the aim of improving the quality of therapy, fostering a client-centered culture, and promoting an evidence-based approach to mental health care. Our session will highlight FIT's implementation process, share key insights from research on clinician attitudes and experiences, and explore the role of organizational culture in sustaining FIT's effectiveness.

Through our case study, attendees will gain practical insights into the benefits and challenges of FIT from a clinician’s perspective. We will explore the structural support and training that enabled NUS to foster a psychologically safe, growth-oriented environment essential for FIT success. Our findings, derived from both quantitative and qualitative data, reveal how organizational practice and policy helps to create positive attitudes and beliefs using FIT to enhance client outcomes.

Benefits of FIT: We will discuss how FIT enables clinicians to assess client feedback, improve session dynamics, and prevent premature termination, ultimately leading to better treatment outcomes.

Challenges and Clinician Perspectives: Attendees will learn about the logistical and skill-based challenges UCS clinicians faced in using FIT, as well as the thematic benefits they found in using this framework.

Organizational Culture: A psychologically safe, open culture is essential for implementing FIT effectively. We will highlight policies and support structures within NUS Health and Well-being that facilitated FIT integration.

Recommendations: Practical recommendations will cover further training, supervisory support, and strategies to address common implementation challenges.

Our presentation aims to inspire mental health professionals by showcasing how FIT can elevate the standard of care in university settings and beyond, emphasizing the crucial link between organizational culture and successful therapeutic outcomes.

Three Key Learnings:
1. The benefits of Feedback-Informed Treatment usage in a University counselling service.

2. Insight into attitudes and beliefs towards Feedback-Informed Treatment (FIT) and what clinicians find helpful or unhelpful about FIT in a university counselling service.

3. Insights into policies, practices and resources that allow for the successful implementation of FIT within an organization.

Stress has a neurobiological impact on each of us and influences our emotional and psychological safety. At a minimum, it decreases our pre-frontal cortex and increases our amygdala. As mental health professionals, we deal with stress daily at a level that is often uncommon and unhealthy for most. The result of consuming so much stress means that we must have a detailed, well-run process for managing our emotional and psychological safety. This workshop will highlight the importance of acknowledging our emotional and psychological safety as Mental Health Professionals and provide practical tools from a neurobiological perspective for managing the impact of stress on our safety.

The growing body of research exploring the correlations between time spent in nature and a sense of well-being underscores a fundamental shift in how we understand our relationship with the natural world. Nature is now being recognised as an integral part of a holistic worldview, essential to our overall mental, emotional, and societal health. Creative arts therapy provides a unique pathway for engaging with this deeper, preverbal knowing we have of our place in the world, helping to foster a sense of connectedness to self, others, the environment and the larger patterns of life.

By processing our sensory and experiential engagement with nature through creative forms of expression—such as visual arts, movement, and storytelling—we can give voice to our inner world, articulate our feelings, and make meaning from our experience. A therapeutic approach creates relational opportunities for intersubjective exploration, where individuals and groups can bridge diversity, hold ambiguity, and share meanings in a safe, collective space. This strengthens our connection to ourselves and others. Through reflective creative practices, individuals can clarify personal and collective values, integrate mind-body-emotion experiences, and develop resilience.

Ultimately, this presentation offers a holistic approach to therapy, emphasising the healing potential of nature-based creative therapy to act as a catalyst to transform our understanding of self and the environment, leading to greater resilience, wellbeing and interconnectedness.

Concern for human rights and the care of people with intellectual disability (ID) is not a new phenomenon. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) article 25, sets out the right to “enjoyment of the highest standards of health without discrimination on the basis of disability”. Yet little attention is paid either to the impact being placed in secure care has on people when they engage in offending behaviour. Due to potential vulnerability, legislation aims to protect people with ID from penal institutions, and to provide care and rehabilitation in secure hospitals. Nurses are expected to deliver quality care, yet many nurses have little or no experience of working with people with ID and offending behaviour.
In New Zealand the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and rehabilitation) Act 2003 provides a legislative pathway away from prison. In Queensland the Mental Health Act (2016) is used to determine the ‘fate’ of an offender with ID under forensic orders, courts can direct people to secure care, often in a mental health institution. In 2019 in Queensland alone, 103 people were under a forensic disability order within secure mental health services that do not require treatment for mental disorder.
Research undertaken in New Zealand suggests nurses working with offenders with ID feel ill equipped and concerned about the coercive nature of ‘care’. Secure mental health facilities have been considered inappropriate for people with intellectual and cognitive disability, who have different needs to people experiencing acute mental health conditions. Despite this, many are directed to these environments for ‘secure care’ and this is unlikely to change.
The future of clinical practice with people with ID requires review overall, a close look at what education is necessary to ensure nurses have the appropriate skills to care for this group of people.

What does it mean to "hold space" for someone else as a Lived Experience Peer Worker in Suicide Prevention?

It means that we are willing to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they are on without judging them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them or trying to impact the outcome

When we hold space for others in times of distress we open our hearts, offer unbiased support & let go of judgment & control

We allow those we support to be in control of their own journey in recovery

As Lived Experience Peer Workers in Suicide Prevention we don't save lives, we help people chose how they can change their own lives.

Let's celebrate the human value of bringing Lived Experience in Suicide Prevention Support & talk about those challenges & golden moments that remind us every day that we are working side by side with real people, not numbers or case files.

Three Key Learnings:
1. Helping those we support learn how to change their own lives
2. Understanding the value of the shared journey in recovery
3. Appreciating the value in person-to-person shared knowledge & open conversation around mental distress & suicide prevention support

Research suggests postgraduate students face numerous stressors throughout their candidature, with negative implications for their wellbeing and academic performance. Additionally, recent research from the U.S., Europe and the U.K. indicates a substantial number of doctoral students experience mental ill health, with many reporting symptoms of clinical depression and/or anxiety. In the present study, we explored experiences of Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students at a large research-intensive university in Australia, focusing on three research questions: (1) What are the factors that affect HDR student wellbeing?; (2) How do these factors impact their wellbeing?; (3) How can universities better support HDR students? We conducted eight focus groups with 36 participants in total and used a social mapping tool to identify important groups in their lives. Data were managed using NVivo and coded to identify major themes. The analysis revealed that multiple factors affect student wellbeing, most notably structural issues such as tight deadlines, inflexible policies, precarious employment, and inadequate stipends; social issues including supervisor conflict, peer pressure and competition, isolation, and lack of voice; and an exploitative “publish or perish” culture. Many participants reported experiencing periods of intense sadness, anxiety, and guilt during their candidature, as well as reduced academic performance. However, participants also identified factors that helped support and protect their wellbeing, including a good relationship with their supervisor, strong peer networks, prioritizing rest and relaxation, using effective coping strategies, and making time for exercise and adequate sleep. Our study is one of the first to explore HDR student experiences in Australia post-COVID, highlighting that doctoral students are at clear risk of poor wellbeing and require urgent attention. Here, universities must offer better financial support, ensure supervisors are adequately trained to support their students, lead with empathy and compassion, and create positive research cultures that prioritise student wellbeing.

Three Key Learnings:
1. Higher Degree by Research students face considerable pressures during their candidature and are at risk of poor mental health. Our research adds to recent findings from the U.S., the U.K., and Europe demonstrating there is an urgent need to understand their lived experiences.

2. Multiple factors in the university system and work environment affect wellbeing, especially financial pressures, precarious employment, a “publish or perish” culture, and student-supervisor conflict.

3. Individual-level interventions are not enough. Universities must actively build research cultures that prioritise student wellbeing, ensure supervisors are trained to support students, and offer increased financial support throughout candidature.

More than 3 million Australians care for a family member or friend who lives with a disability, mental illness, or health condition, or who requires support due to age. Caring is even more common in culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. Overall, approximately one in ten Australian carers speak a language other than English at home, and nearly one in five were born in a non-English speaking country.
Carers provide an important contribution to the provision of care in Australia. The overall value of unpaid care work is estimated at $77 billion per year in 2020. Despite these considerable contributions, carers often report that their efforts go unrecognised by services. This contribution examines the experiences of carers from a CALD background with mental health services, based on data from the Carers NSW 2024 National Carer Survey.
While overall CALD carers report similar problems to other carers, cultural and language differences exacerbate many systemic issues. While most carers are involved in care-related decision making and planning, a majority report that they are not being asked about their own needs, with CALD carers even less likely to be asked about theirs. This leaves many carers with inadequate support for their mental health. Issues relating to system complexity, such as administrative burden, were experienced at a higher rate by CALD carers, as were issues relating to the costs of services. CALD carers were significantly more likely than other respondents to the Survey to report an unmet need for services for themselves, and care for someone without the support of formal care services. As a result, CALD carers report significantly worse mental health and wellbeing themselves. Services, including mental health services, need to improve their identification of CALD carers in order to better support their mental health.

Carers are a crucial support in the recovery of people with mental health challenges in the community. As they are often severely affected by the mental health challenges of the person they care for, carers need to recover from the impact alongside the person they care for. While mental health services focus on the recovery of their client, carers’ recovery is largely neglected. Using the CHIME (Connectedness, Hope and optimism about the future, Identity, Meaning in life and Empowerment) recovery framework, we examine carers’ experiences and what they needed in their own recovery. A mixed methods approach was used to analyse the responses of 1,918 carers who completed the Australian 2020 National Carer Survey. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes regarding carers’ experiences against the elements of CHIME. Quantitative findings regarding subjective wellbeing and perception of support were used to complement the themes. Themes aligned with CHIME but indicated poor recovery. Recognition (R) was found to be an important recovery factor for carers.

This presentation examines the adoption and use of Feedback Informed Treatment (FIT) within the University Counselling Services (UCS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). FIT has been instrument UCS has implemented with the aim of improving the quality of therapy, fostering a client-centered culture, and promoting an evidence-based approach to mental health care. Our session will highlight FIT's implementation process, share key insights from research on clinician attitudes and experiences, and explore the role of organizational culture in sustaining FIT's effectiveness.

Through our case study, attendees will gain practical insights into the benefits and challenges of FIT from a clinician’s perspective. We will explore the structural support and training that enabled NUS to foster a psychologically safe, growth-oriented environment essential for FIT success. Our findings, derived from both quantitative and qualitative data, reveal how organizational practice and policy helps to create positive attitudes and beliefs using FIT to enhance client outcomes.

Benefits of FIT: We will discuss how FIT enables clinicians to assess client feedback, improve session dynamics, and prevent premature termination, ultimately leading to better treatment outcomes.

Challenges and Clinician Perspectives: Attendees will learn about the logistical and skill-based challenges UCS clinicians faced in using FIT, as well as the thematic benefits they found in using this framework.

Organizational Culture: A psychologically safe, open culture is essential for implementing FIT effectively. We will highlight policies and support structures within NUS Health and Well-being that facilitated FIT integration.

Recommendations: Practical recommendations will cover further training, supervisory support, and strategies to address common implementation challenges.

Our presentation aims to inspire mental health professionals by showcasing how FIT can elevate the standard of care in university settings and beyond, emphasizing the crucial link between organizational culture and successful therapeutic outcomes.

Three Key Learnings:
1. The benefits of Feedback-Informed Treatment usage in a University counselling service.

2. Insight into attitudes and beliefs towards Feedback-Informed Treatment (FIT) and what clinicians find helpful or unhelpful about FIT in a university counselling service.

3. Insights into policies, practices and resources that allow for the successful implementation of FIT within an organization.

This presentation examines the adoption and use of Feedback Informed Treatment (FIT) within the University Counselling Services (UCS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). FIT has been instrument UCS has implemented with the aim of improving the quality of therapy, fostering a client-centered culture, and promoting an evidence-based approach to mental health care. Our session will highlight FIT's implementation process, share key insights from research on clinician attitudes and experiences, and explore the role of organizational culture in sustaining FIT's effectiveness.

Through our case study, attendees will gain practical insights into the benefits and challenges of FIT from a clinician’s perspective. We will explore the structural support and training that enabled NUS to foster a psychologically safe, growth-oriented environment essential for FIT success. Our findings, derived from both quantitative and qualitative data, reveal how organizational practice and policy helps to create positive attitudes and beliefs using FIT to enhance client outcomes.

Benefits of FIT: We will discuss how FIT enables clinicians to assess client feedback, improve session dynamics, and prevent premature termination, ultimately leading to better treatment outcomes.

Challenges and Clinician Perspectives: Attendees will learn about the logistical and skill-based challenges UCS clinicians faced in using FIT, as well as the thematic benefits they found in using this framework.

Organizational Culture: A psychologically safe, open culture is essential for implementing FIT effectively. We will highlight policies and support structures within NUS Health and Well-being that facilitated FIT integration.

Recommendations: Practical recommendations will cover further training, supervisory support, and strategies to address common implementation challenges.

Our presentation aims to inspire mental health professionals by showcasing how FIT can elevate the standard of care in university settings and beyond, emphasizing the crucial link between organizational culture and successful therapeutic outcomes.

Three Key Learnings:
1. The benefits of Feedback-Informed Treatment usage in a University counselling service.

2. Insight into attitudes and beliefs towards Feedback-Informed Treatment (FIT) and what clinicians find helpful or unhelpful about FIT in a university counselling service.

3. Insights into policies, practices and resources that allow for the successful implementation of FIT within an organization.

This presentation will provide an overview of batyr’s Program Evolution project, an innovative approach to designing mental health prevention programs in secondary schools and universities in Australia. batyr’s development process breaks the mould of mental health education by first asking what young people truly need to support their mental health and that of their community. This translates into evidence-based programs that centre peer-to-peer engagement and lived experience storytelling.
Since 2011, batyr has reached over 330,000 young people with mental health education and training programs that reduce stigma and improve help-seeking. batyr’s collaborative approach with young people, service partners and educators has been creating pathways for young people to better inform support structures around them to meet their needs.


The batyr team will share with conference delegates how the Program Evolution project embedded youth participation and lived experience within the design process, whilst also greatly improving capacity to scale nationally and creating fewer barriers for young people across Australia to access their programs. The presenters will share the research design and key findings that led to the development of the new program structure. Finally, the batyr team will present the initial pilot insights and their relevance to the mental health education sector.

Poor mental can be very costly. The World Health Organization recently reported that an estimated 12 billion working days are lost every year to common mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety, which equates to US$1 trillion per year in reduced productivity across the globe. In Australia, workplace mental ill-health is estimated to cost businesses in excess of $AUD 39 billion per year, and this has steadily risen over the past two decades. A variety of mental health interventions are currently available in the workplace, such as counselling based therapies, meditation, and mental health education and training. However, there is a limited understanding of the efficacy of these interventions as very few evaluations have been conducted. The current study investigates the effectiveness of a mental health training program delivered over a 12 month period with a sample of working Australians from a local council. A baseline survey was administered to the study participants prior to the commencement of the intervention and a follow up survey was administered upon completion. The intervention consisted of a series of workshops delivered in-person at the local council including mental health awareness, mental health resilience, and mental health response training. As expected, the participant’s scores on mental health resilience, confidence supporting someone with a mental health struggle, help-seeking behaviour, and perceptions of social distance/ stigma improved overtime. These results are important as they emphasise the key role that mental health training programs play in the development of essential mental health-related behaviours and skills in the workplace, such as resilience, help-seeking behaviour, support skills, and reduced stigma. Early intervention is key when managing mental health concerns, and it is these mental health-related behaviours and skills that create an environment where early intervention is possible. Study limitations and challenges will also be discussed.

In the same way stories have been used for centuries to pass down knowledge and bring people together, Murrumbidgee Primary Health Network (MPHN) has harnessed the same tradition through our Tell it Well story series.
Since launching in 2019, the Tell it Well series has shared stories from people in many walks of life who have lived and living mental health experience. The premise: share stories of local people to inspire hopefulness and encourage people to connect with supports. Our storytellers are real and generous. They live in our communities and connect with people to deliver messages in ways health professionals often can’t. Their courage and willingness to share their deeply personal story is making a difference.
While literature demonstrates the power of storytelling in improving mental health and wellbeing, and our social media engagement shows these stories are reaching thousands of people, it’s the direct feedback from our storytellers that is truly inspiring.
Peer support worker and storyteller, Spencer McGill said sharing his story helped create a deeper understanding among his family and friends about his struggles. People contacted him to let him know the positive effect it had on them saying “talking so openly, especially as a man, apparently helped a lot to open up and they found great value in it.”
For Aaron Cochrane, who shared his story of drug dependency, his estranged family reached out. “Now we have a really good relationship, and the story was the start of the change for us, the start of rebuilding everything. It really showed them that I was changing my life and I can behave myself and you can get rid of the old traits.”
Our storytellers are nothing short of inspiring. As we continue to reduce stigma through the Murrumbidgee, imagine the possibilities of storytelling in your region.

Australia does not currently offer undergraduate specialist qualifications in Addiction or Mental Health Nursing. With increasing demand for specialist addiction and mental health services, compounded by many nurses nearing retirement age, there is a shortage of specialist addiction and mental health nurses. Strategies to build the Addiction and Mental Health nursing workforce are critical to continue to meet the addiction and mental health needs of the community.

To support meeting the nursing workforce demands across Metro South Addiction and Mental Health Services (MSAMHS), a nursing immersion and specialist academic partnership program was developed. The program aimed to rapidly onboard and support the development of a pool of permanently recruited early career registered nurses and experienced registered nurses new to addictions and mental health setting.

A group of registered nurses were recruited and underwent an immersive supernumerary period of five weeks in the Mental Health clinical inpatient units and one week in the Addictions and Mental Health Services in the community units. The skills were consolidated with blended academic learning as part of the collaboration between Metro South Addiction and Mental Health Services (MSAMHS) and Central Queensland University (CQU). The program included an orientation training period, completion of clinical assessment tools, face-to-face workshops and independent online study which is articulated to a Graduate Certificate in Mental Health Nursing degree.

The programs aimed to facilitate an acquisition of specialist nursing knowledge and skills to build capacity and confidence in providing mental health care. The registered nurses who underwent the program were transitioned or contracted to vacancies across the services.

Three Key Learnings:
1. Nursing Immersion and Academic Program was developed to increase addictions and mental health nursing workforce.
2. The programs are designed to rapidly onboard nurses and acquire specialist nursing knowledge and skills.
3. Registered Nurses participating the program acquires Graduate Certificate in Mental Health Nursing degree after completing the requirements in the partnership program.

The growing body of research exploring the correlations between time spent in nature and a sense of well-being underscores a fundamental shift in how we understand our relationship with the natural world. Nature is now being recognised as an integral part of a holistic worldview, essential to our overall mental, emotional, and societal health. Creative arts therapy provides a unique pathway for engaging with this deeper, preverbal knowing we have of our place in the world, helping to foster a sense of connectedness to self, others, the environment and the larger patterns of life.