Towards an understanding of medical student resilience in longitudinal integrated clerkships.

Background: Resilience is required to succeed academically, overcome challenges during clinical training and cope positively with stress in future professional life. With medical students at high risk of mental illness, socially accountable medical schools are seeking to foster student resilience. This exploratory study proposes a conceptual framework for student resilience in longitudinal integrated clerkships (LICs).

Tackling the global mental health challenge: a psychosomatic medicine/consultation-liaison psychiatry perspective.

Background: Consultation-liaison (C-L) psychiatry, informed by principles of psychosomatic medicine, is well-positioned to address the global impact of mental disorders through primary care C-L models.

Objective/method: The authors review the international burden of mental disorders, highlighting medical comorbidity, undertreatment, and the rationale for enhancing primary-care management.

Results: C-L psychiatry fosters the skills required for global mental health work.

The development of an 'Indigenous team' in a mainstream mental health service in South Australia.

The Social Justice Report 2005 recommended that the governments of Australia commit to achieving equal health status for all Australians "within a generation". Improving the accessibility of mainstream health services for Aboriginal people is highlighted as a central requirement. This paper describes the establishment, roles and functions of the 'Indigenous team' embedded within the South Australian Rural and Remote Mental Health Service (RRMHS) as one strategy to improve access and responsiveness of mental health services to Aboriginal patients in South Australia.

Improving transfer of mental health care for rural and remote consumers in South Australia.

In Australia, it is commonplace for tertiary mental health care to be provided in large regional centres or metropolitan cities. Rural and remote consumers must be transferred long distances, and this inevitably results in difficulties with the integration of their care between primary and tertiary settings. Because of the need to address these issues, and improve the transfer process, a research project was commissioned by a national government department to be conducted in South Australia.