Teaching Spotlight: Mental Health Discovery Subject
The Department of Psychiatry is delivering our first discovery subject for the MD2 students at the end of July, 2025. This is a four week topic, on psychological trauma and is brought together by members from the Department of Psychiatry, in collaboration with affiliates through Phoenix Australia and Victorian Doctors Health Program.
Students select this subject in their second year, and it provides an opportunity for them to explore psychological trauma and consider the impact of health and healthcare service delivery.
Students will develop skills in trauma informed approaches and understanding of coping strategies. They will have placements in clinical settings including general wards, community alcohol and other drug services and mental health services, that will provide an overview of what services are available within their clinical school community, and provide them with introductory skills in working with people’s emotional experiences in their clinical encounters.
The discovery subjects are additional to core curriculum, such as the mental health and psychiatry teaching they experience in their MD3 year. We are pleased to offer these broader skills and a strong and engaging curriculum for those with an interest in the area of mental health.
We have a young team of mental health educators who will be delivering face to face content, focused on interactive and reflective learning, including an interdisciplinary workshop with lived experience contributors. The majority of the teaching content is online with an interactive focus case that follows the inhabitants of a local community impacted by a flood. The students will follow a number of story lines of this community through a range of current and past traumatic experiences, and the consideration of the impact of their physiology, coping strategies, inequities, developmental histories, family and community responses, including those in workplaces in the aftermath of a disaster.
The students have the opportunity to reflect not only on the impact of illness as a potentially traumatic experience for patients, but also on how this can impact on the role of staff working in health settings and how to look after oneself and advocate for system change. A process that assists these future young doctors in having the skills to understand that, whilst in the words of the classic song "When the going gets tough, the tough get going", they will have more skills at their disposal in the challenges that lie ahead in their future practice.
Special thanks to Dr Mark Vella for his assistance in this topic, Denise Ho and Simone Stahli-Quinn. It is pleasing to hear that all students will be provided with Mental Health First Aid from next year, and I am hoping to expand the frequency we can provide this topic in 2026.
See more information on the Discovery Subject.
Associate Professor Lee Allen
MD Mental Health Academic Lead