The Initial Assessment and Referral decision support tool has been created to understand your mental health across eight areas of your life.
For example, it looks at what symptoms you have, as well as the support you have around you, and things in the environment that may be causing stress too.
Looking at these eight different areas (domains) helps mental health workers decide the most appropriate treatment you need at that point in time. The most appropriate treatment is referred to as a ‘level of care’.
Mental health services are sorted by levels of care, which refers to the intensity of that service. Intensity means how strong or frequent a service is.
For example, if a service provides you with an online program to follow, things to read online, or some great articles, books or apps to follow, this would be considered very low intensity. The reason for this is because most of what you are doing is controlled and managed by you (self-managed), and you are not interacting with a mental health worker just yet.
Increasing intensity may mean speaking with a mental health worker on the phone, or even face to face, but maybe just a few times.
Someone who needs services of higher intensity would mean they need to talk with one or more mental health workers, and more often. They may even need to stay overnight in hospital or another mental health clinic.
This level of care is designed to help you take charge of your mental health before it gets worse.
You may be having difficulty with sleeping, managing stress, maintaining healthy behaviours or parenting. Resources and programs at this level help you maintain positive mental health through easily accessible digital therapies or self-guided mental health programs in your community.
You may not be speaking with anyone just yet, but all these services are reliable and based on scientific evidence. Community houses and centres are a great example of services that offer programs to promote positive mental health.
Level 2 services include some brief, direct contact with a mental health worker. You may also see therapists, coaches or social workers.
There will be options to access these services via telehealth, face to face or over the phone. At this level, you should only need a few sessions before you start to feel more empowered to manage your mental health.
This level involves more frequent contact with a mental health worker to help with your mental distress. To access a service at this level, you will need to see a GP who will arrange a referral for you.
Your referral will include mental health treatment plan that helps psychologists, counsellors or social workers to provide personalised support to you over a period of time.
At this level, your mood will be quite low, and you will be feeling high levels of mental distress. You may need assistance from a mental health team consisting of psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses and social workers etc.
To access a service at this level, you will need to see a GP who will arrange a referral for you. A personalised plan will need to be developed to help you manage your mental health, and you can be seen in the community or at a hospital.
At this level you will need lots of support from a number of specialists. This may be case managers, psychiatrists, social workers, occupational therapists, psychologists or drug and alcohol workers.
You may be treated in hospital, or in the community by outreach workers. A team of professionals will coordinate your care and mental health recovery.
You will need a referral from a GP to access services at this level.
The FindHelpTAS service directory allows you to further refine your search if you are looking for a more specific service. On the home page, select the ‘mental health’ program category. You will then have the option to select sub-categories that address your specific concern.
If you would like to understand the IAR levels of care further, please contact iar@primaryhealthtas.com.au. The IAR team at Primary Health Tasmania will be able to help with any questions you have relating to the levels of care and the IAR process in general.