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Mental Health Research

Our collaborative research partnerships have enabled us to replace our intuitive understanding that what we do ‘works’, with data that substantiates this claim. This ensures we are delivering a service grounded in efficacy and we can translate our knowledge from research findings into a process of continuous learning.

Jane Cooper, Practice and Capability Lead – Mindset TAS

Baptcare provides family and community services to support vulnerable and marginalised groups in society.

One such group is people living with mental health conditions – especially those in the community who don’t have adequate support. A key pillar of Baptcare’s research in mental health is a project undertaken by Monash University to independently evaluate our Mindset TAS program.

Mindset TAS

Mindset is an innovative, community-based mental health program that Baptcare has developed over the past 10 years. In this time, the program has worked with thousands of people, delivering holistic services that are designed to reduce the need for our clients to access tertiary mental health services.

Find out more about Mindset

Mindset TAS Strengths

A strength of the program lies in the way Mindset partners with program participants, stakeholders, funders and local communities to ensure people with persistent and severe mental health conditions are supported in the community.

Unique and highly effective, the Mindset program:

Provides valuable support to program participants, their families and carers;
Helps people maintain connections in the community;
Supports people to find and remain in accommodation;
Connects people to services that help them meet their needs and goals;
Ensures services are coordinated, integrated and relevant.

Research in action

Monash University’s independent evaluation of the Mindset program began in 2018. Baptcare has translated this research into action to facilitate the development of evidence-informed Mindset programs that are:

Flexible
Measurable
Sustainable
Nationally accredited.

This research underlines Baptcare’s commitment to providing outstanding care and support to vulnerable people in our communities and highlights the way we use research to continuously measure, refine and develop the services we offer.

Featured Research Projects

The following projects give an insight into some of the world-leading Mental Health research undertaken by Baptcare.

Mindset Foundations

Mindset Foundations was developed to better meet the needs of people in the community living with severe mental health conditions. A mixed-methods evaluation was conducted to assess the effectiveness of Mindset Foundations in improving clients’ clinical and psychosocial functioning from baseline to 39 weeks of engagement with the program. The evaluation also explored stakeholders’ perspectives of the impact of the program.

Mindset Foundations findings

The evaluation showed that Mindset Foundations yielded significantly larger effect sizes in comparison to other similar community mental health programs.These findings demonstrate that Mindset Foundations is an effective model of community mental health care that can facilitate significant improvements in clinical and psychosocial functioning among adults with a serious mental illness.

Mindset Choices

Mindset Choices was developed to more effectively meet the needs of people with a serious mental illness in the community following psychiatric hospitalisation. In the first independent evaluation of Mindset Choices, a mixed-methods evaluation was conducted to assess the effect of the program in improving clients’ clinical and psychosocial functioning from baseline to closure. The evaluation also explored stakeholders’ perspectives of the impact of the program.

Mindset Choices findings

The research findings demonstrate that Mindset Choices is an effective model of community mental health care that can facilitate significant improvements in clinical and psychosocial functioning among adults with a serious mental illness.

Professional Development

Together with Monash University, Baptcare has developed workshops designed to help staff working in mental health service areas to better understand Program Logic, Implementation Science and Evaluation. These workshops have been delivered to Baptcare’s Mental Health Workforce and other business units across the agency.

References & Further Reading

The Evaluation of a Community-Based Mental Health Program: Examining Change Outcomes and the Implementation Strategy.
American Journal of Community Psychology
O’Donnell, R; Pizzirani, B; Savaglio, M; Breman, R; Fast, D; Vicary, D & Skouteris H. (2019).

Program description and implementation findings of MyCare: enhancing community mental health care in Tasmania, Australia.
Australian Journal of Primary Health, 26(5), 374–382.
O’Donnell, R., Ayton, D., Pizzirani, B., Savaglio, M., Fast, D., Vicary, D., & Skouteris, H. (2020).

Effect of community mental health care programs in Australia: A systematic review.
Australian Journal of Primary Health, 26(6), pp. 443-451.
O’Donnell, R., Savaglio, M., Vicary, D. & Skouteris, H. (2020).

MyCare study: Protocol for a controlled trial evaluating the effect of a community-based intervention
on psychosocial, clinical outcomes and hospital admission rates for adults with severe mental illness.
BMJ Open, 10(11).
Vicary, D., O’donnell, R., Skouteris, H., Savaglio, M., Fast, D. & Vincent, A. (2020).

Learn more about the 'MyCare Protocol' project here