New e-mental health service unveiled

A major new mental health web portal has been launched this week by Professor Britt Klein, Director of the Centre for Bio-psychosocial and eHealth Research & Innovation at Federation University Australia.

Their flagship program, LIFE FLeX, pays equal attention to the mind-body relationship (biology, emotions, thoughts, behaviours and increasing positive emotions) when approaching depression and anxiety.

Depression and the anxiety disorders are all too prevalent mental health conditions.

Survey estimates suggest that around 1,000,000 Australians experience a mood disorder and 2,300,000 experience an anxiety disorder in a 12 month period, and the majority do not access services.

“Australia is one of the world leaders in e-mental health and successive Australian Governments have been supporting e-mental health services, as a way to increase timely access to assistance securely and conveniently,” Professor Britt Klein, the University’s Emeritus Professor Robert HT Smith Professor and Personal Chair in Psychology and eHealth, said.

Federation University Australia was a pioneer in this field, developing and evaluating one of the first e-mental health programs in 1998, called Panic Online, a cognitive behavioural therapy program for Panic Disorder.

“Now we are offering what we believe to be a world’s first bio-psychosocial web and mobile intervention program for depression and anxiety,” Professor Klein said.

“The ‘FLeX’ part in LIFE FLeX is short for ‘flexibility’ as this program focuses on teaching core psychological and biological life skills to assist people to respond more flexibly and adaptively to life and all of its daily events and challenges.

“Given many adults have not been formally taught these core life skills at school it is little wonder why many of us can struggle, especially when difficulties arise.

“Therefore, LIFE FLeX is about re-dressing this lack of formal education and helping people better learn how to respond to life more flexibility and adaptively,” Professor Klein said.

LIFE FLeX also incorporates the concept of brain or neural plasticity. Neural plasticity is an empowering concept – as it explains how and why we are all able to change and improve.

“This involves the idea that everyone’s brain, is malleable or plastic and not ‘hardwired’, fixed or unchangeable as we once thought,” Professor Klein said.

“Consequently, our more problematic and seemingly automatic biological, emotional, cognitive (thinking) and behavioural responses can be better managed.

“Therefore one of the major themes of the program is the role of the brain and how we can create more helpful neural connections and pathways.

“LIFE FLeX provides a person with a mixture of evidence-based bio-psychosocial intervention modules enriched with video, guided audios, personalised feedback, experiential learning activities, and integrates this with ‘On the Go’ Mobile tools.”

Although the entire program can be accessed via web or mobile, ‘On the Go Mobile’ provides people with quick access to the ‘tools’ of the program when they are out and about. Support is available 24 hours a day.

So, you might be on a train and notice that you are becoming anxious as your heart rate and breathing starts to increase. You can then simply switch on the breathing control or mindfulness audio/videos or read the instructions for assistance.

Alternatively you may like to do one of the weekly activities, like the cognitive bias modification game practise sessions. You also can fill out our mood monitoring form or learn more about brain and gut nutrition.

The University is offering LIFE FLeX to people 18 years and over for free, using an open trial design. After consenting to the study, participants create an account and answer some pre-program questionnaires. People will then receive immediate access to LIFE FLeX.

LIFE FLeX can be accessed directly by visiting www.lifeflex.fedehealth.org.au

The University will unveil other portal web and mobile programs over the coming weeks.

(Source: Federation University)