A new mental health facility in Adelaide has been designed exclusively for clients from remote areas with a special focus on Indigenous treatment.
The 23 bed unit is part of a $130 million upgrade that puts special emphasis on cultural space for Aboriginal clients.
Rebecca Graham from Country Health SA said that 25 per cent of the beds are occupied by Aboriginal people at any given time.
“We always prioritise our beds at rural and remote to cater for those people who are coming to Adelaide who are Aboriginal,” she said.
There in-patient mental health facility is the only one in the state to combine modern medicine and traditional healing.
“We’re very comfortable with having traditional healers come down, nunkaris and we'll be working with people from a spiritual healing component as well as part of their care,” Ms Graham said.
Clients have electronic swipe access to self-contained rooms that they can personalise and all but clinical areas are lock-free, a deliberate departure from previous practices of confinement.
Rural and Remote Network Manager Dan Donaghy said the aim was to give people as many choices as possible.
“We have the open unit, people can walk out the doors,” he said.
“It's not a locked facility, people can circulate around.”
The unit’s success has seen it become the template for the state's first such country facility, to open in Whyalla at the end of the month.
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