The Rural Mental Health Emergency and Critical Care Access Plan

Summary

The RMHECCAP provides a framework for the development of emergency mental health services tailored to specific rural and remote conditions: distance, population distribution, workforce and available hospital services, and identifies the resource requirements to meet those needs.

The plan assists rural areas to develop an implementation plan based on networking of services from regional bases to promote:

• improved safety of transport
• increased access to specialist mental health advice and support to more remote facilities
• training of health staff in rural mental health emergencies
• the appropriateness of services to the level of patient need and environment and
• mainstreaming of mental health emergency care.