Orygen hosted its fourth headspace Youth Early Psychosis Program (hYEPP) workshop in Brisbane in mid-May, bringing together 60 hYEPP staff and PHNs from around Australia. The workshop was part of Orygen’s work to support hYEPPs in their implementation of Orygen’s Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre (EPPIC) model to young people.
Craig Hodges, who leads Orygen’s National Programs team, said the biannual workshops provided a great platform for staff from hYEPPs to learn from each other while accessing Orygen’s expertise and the latest evidence in psychosis.
“The workshops are centred on the hYEPP sites and what they want to learn more about,” Mr Hodges said. “At the latest workshop peer work was a topic the hYEPP staff were keen to hear more about, and we had a great presentation on establishing and supporting peer work in hYEPP clusters, which resonated a lot with the group.
“Another area of interest was how to increase case detection. There was a lot of discussion around how to do this within the communities local to each hYEPP site, and how hYEPP sites could work together to do this collectively.
“Psychosis is one of those mental illnesses that parents, teachers and even some GPs may not know the early warning signs of, so up-skilling these groups is really important so that young people can be treated as early as possible,” he said.
“We know that the earlier psychosis is treated, the better the chance of recovery for the young person, which is why Orygen is so keen to be involved in providing support and advice for hYEPP sites nationally,” Mr Hodges said.
Other highlights from the workshop included Orygen’s Dr Sarah Bendall presenting on working with trauma in early psychosis and Dr Aswin Ratheesh discussing early psychosis with a bipolar perspective.