In this unit, students critically reflect on the lived experience of mental illness. The students' learning journey begins by examining past institutional abuse of people with mental illness and the continuing effects of stigma across social and diverse cultural contexts. Students analyse the evolution of the mental health consumer movement, focusing on consumer rights, autonomy, self-determination, collaborative decision-making, and strength-based models to support recovery from mental ill-health. Students also interrogate how to support consumers who have complex mental illness or who exhibit challenging behaviours, within a consumer-centred, recovery-oriented framework. Students will also debate the challenges that arise when balancing the diverse needs of consumers and carers in relation to confidentiality, privacy, and disclosure.

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This unit examines biopsychosocial and cultural perspectives of mental illness. This includes the links between serious mental illness, physical health conditions, complex comorbidities, and disability. Students will interrogate the correlation between lower levels of physical health, mental health, and socio-economic indices for people experiencing chronic physical conditions and mental ill-health. Students will also cross-examine the ethical dilemmas and cultural perspectives of mental ill-health for people with diverse experiences, backgrounds, and lifestyles. This includes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, culturally and linguistically diverse groups, LGBTQIA+ peoples, veteran groups, and people from metropolitan, regional, rural, and remote communities across Australia. Students will also evaluate the value of care coordination and care planning approaches for people with complex health and sociocultural needs.

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In this unit, students examine the experiences of trauma among people from diverse populations, cultures, and age groups and its impact across the lifespan. Students will analyse the way people, with the lived experience of trauma, report feeling stigmatised, discriminated against and misunderstood. These impacts include emotional dysregulation, substance misuse, self-harm, and suicidal behaviours. Students will also appraise the eight foundational principles of trauma-informed care and practice that focus on modelling interpersonal relationships, working with cultural differences, advocating for consumer control and choice, inspiring hope, supporting recovery, and integrating care. The unit requires students to critically reflect on their practice through a trauma-informed lens and interrogate the importance of recovery-oriented practice when caring for people who have experienced trauma.

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In this unit, students focus on developing their understanding of mental ill-health. Students examine the most common mental illnesses; the factors that contribute to their prevalence; and the impact of mental illness on the lived experience of diverse people, families, and communities. Students also examine mental health as a national health priority, together with mental health promotion and illness prevention services and strategies. Other aspects of the unit include the legal and ethical frameworks that guide how practitioners work with people with mental illness; and the specific skills needed to build and maintain person-centred therapeutic relationships that promote recovery and resilience. Students will also critically reflect on the need for practitioners to self-care and the importance of consumer-centred supervision.

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This unit introduces students to the key principles and approaches of mental health and recovery-oriented services delivered to diverse children, adolescents, and their families. Learning focuses on presentations of mental ill-health in children and adolescents, who are experiencing challenging social and family environments. The unit examines a range of barriers and enablers to child and adolescent friendly mental health service provision. Students will reflect on strategies to provide culturally appropriate, family-focused, multidisciplinary, and intersectoral mental health services to children and adolescents.

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This unit develops the knowledge and skills of students to ethically support the older person who is experiencing symptoms of mental illness, by employing person-centred approaches to delivering care. Students critically analyse the notion of ageism and how the lived experience of ageism can affect people's mental health in later life. Another learning focus is the comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment of the older person with complex comorbidities. Students also investigate and differentiate between depression, delirium, and dementia; together with the concerning rates of suicide in older populations, and debate the treatment options best suited for the older person who experiences symptoms of mental illness.

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This unit develops students' knowledge of psychological therapies used in mental health settings to support people who experience symptoms of mental illness or ill-health. Students will consider how to apply a range of therapeutic modalities used in the management of mental health problems and illnesses in culturally appropriate ways. Students will also critically examine cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) principles and skills and their application with children, adolescents, adults and older people who experience mental health problems. The unit further interrogates the evidence base for the more common non-pharmacological approaches, such as dialectical behavioural therapy, interpersonal therapy, psychodynamic approaches and mindfulness-based interventions.

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This unit investigates evidence-based research and its application in the healthcare setting. Students will develop and refine their skills in searching and critically reviewing and evaluating available nursing and healthcare research and evidence. Students will also learn to use critical appraisal tools to evaluate qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research. By examining systematic reviews to clarify how evidence is synthesised, students will critically appraise literature and identify gaps in current knowledge to design and develop research proposals and/or projects.

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This unit supports students to interrogate the nature of dependency on and addiction to substances, such as licit and illicit drugs, alcohol, and tobacco; and behavioural addictions to food, sex, gambling, video games, social media and gaming. Students deconstruct the concepts, models, and theories of addiction; and national and international policies and approaches to addressing addictive behaviours. An important focus of the unit is the analysis of the processes involved in achieving behavioural change, including prevention programs, counselling strategies, techniques such as motivational interviewing, and evidence-based approaches to reducing harm.

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The focus of this unit is the assessment of people who experience the symptoms of mental ill-health. Students are supported to extend their knowledge and skills in conducting mental health assessments, to encompass the full range of complex health needs of mental health consumers and their family or carers. Students will learn how to conduct a range of comprehensive risk assessments to advance their understanding and application of classification systems to mental health disorders. The unit requires students to critically evaluate how to apply the findings of an assessment to provide a range of ethical consumer-centred treatment options.

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In this unit students consolidate their training by investigating a significant issue in their specialisation through undertaking a research project. Students will strengthen their evidence-based research capabilities by participating in a number of key phases and activities of an evidence-based research project to inform practice. Students will critically review the literature, including academic, policy and/or practice evidence, collecting, analysing, interpreting and disseminating findings in the form of a report or journal article for publication.

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