Geography of primary mental health care through the Better Access initiative in South Australia 2006-2010.

Objective: To examine how the rates of the use of particular face-to-face primary mental health care services changed in the first 4 years (2006-2010) of the Better Access initiative in both urban and rural regions of South Australia.

Design: Time-series analysis of the number of psychology session, psychiatry assessment and general practitioner care plan services recorded in Medicare Australia data.

Setting: South Australia.

A comparison between phone-based psychotherapy with and without text messaging support in between sessions for crisis patients.

Background: Few studies have tested whether individually tailored text messaging interventions have an effect on clinical outcomes when used to supplement traditional psychotherapy. This is despite the potential to improve outcomes through symptom monitoring, prompts for between-session activities, and psychoeducation.

Objective: The intent of the study was to explore the use of individually tailored between-session text messaging, or short message service (SMS), as an adjunct to telephone-based psychotherapy for consumers who present to the Emergency Department (ED) in situational and/or emotional crises.