First of its kind women’s mental health service announced

The development of the new service is driven by recommendations from the Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System, which heard that a range of gender-based safety issues significantly impacted women’s experiences of in-patient mental health care.

In a first of its kind ‘public in private’ partnership, Alfred Health will deliver the psychiatric expertise to the Specialist Women’s Mental Health Centre, based at Ramsay Health’s Albert Road Clinic.

The Alfred’s Director of Operations, Mental and Addiction Health, Associate Professor Sandra Keppich-Arnold, whose team was responsible for developing the initiative, said the service would give women the best opportunity for recovery.

“Women deserve to feel safe, particularly when they are at their most vulnerable,” said Assoc Prof Keppich-Arnold.

“We are completely re-imagining how women receive inpatient mental health care services here, in a way that is welcoming and safe, and where the most expert care is available to them at a time they most need it.”

The service will also be co-designed with people with lived experience.

“Creating a space that has been designed with people with lived experience means these women will truly have a voice,” said lived experience representative Sandy Jeffs.

“Women need access to healing spaces, safe spaces and spaces of asylum.”

As part of the service model, there will also be five additional beds at a regional site in Shepparton, delivered by Goulburn Valley Health.

The statewide service will support women over 18 with a range of complex mental health conditions, including presentation during the perinatal period and eating disorders.