For many new parents in regional Australia, specialist mental health care is not just hard to find — it can be hours away. And that distance is often the difference between getting help early and suffering in silence.
Gidget Foundation Australia is trying to close that gap by bringing specialist perinatal mental health support directly into people’s homes through telehealth.
Widespread need, regional barriers
Arabelle Gibson, CEO of Gidget Foundation Australia, says one in five new mums and one in 10 new dads will experience diagnosed perinatal depression and anxiety. “That equates to 100,000 Australians every single year,” she said.
But in regional areas, the barriers are often greater. There may not be a specialist perinatal mental health clinician in town. If there is a psychologist locally, there can be another challenge: in a small community, the clinician may be someone a parent knows or is connected to. That can make stigma feel even heavier. “In regional areas, there is additional isolation. And there’s geographical hurdles,” Gibson said.
Many regional parents suffer in silence
For some parents, this means they never seek help at all. Gibson said one in four regional parents have experienced perinatal depression and anxiety symptoms and not sought professional support. “The reality is, 25 per cent of parents are experiencing symptoms and they just don’t know who to reach out to, where to go, what to do,” she said.
Dubbo mother Letitia Bassingthwaighte knows the struggle well, suffering from post-natal psychosis four days after giving birth. She eventually found help at Gidget and managed to get telehealth support during the birth of her second child.
Specialist care via telehealth
Katie Peterson, a Gidget clinical psychologist and team manager based in Tamworth, sees those barriers up close. “Rural families and regional families are often having to face longer wait times, isolation,” she said. “Perinatal mental health is a specialist service, so often you won’t get that in regional and rural areas. You’ll have to be relying on online services or sometimes actually travelling to the city to get those unique services.”
The travel can be overwhelming for any parent but for someone who has just had a baby, it can be a hurdle that turns them away completely. “You can’t drive for the first six weeks. You might be incredibly exhausted and tired from the lack of sleep. So it’s actually dangerous to drive long distances,” Gibson said. “You might be a one car family and therefore have geographical issues that can present themselves. So making sure that people who are isolated have access to telehealth has been so important to the foundation and so important to that continuation of care. The beauty of telehealth is that you can keep the continuation of support and help and clinical treatment at a time when you’ve had a new baby.”
Start Talking program: early intervention
Gidget’s telehealth program, Start Talking, was created before COVID made online health care common. When lockdowns began, the foundation was able to move all appointments online within 24 hours. “We actually were able to move all of our appointments online over a 24-hour period and not miss one single appointment for anyone within our services,” Gibson said.
For regional parents, the model is life-changing. It means a mother in Dubbo, Tamworth, Orange, or any other regional town does not have to lose hours on the road to access specialist support. It means care is consistent and a parent is able to build trust with one clinician, instead of repeatedly retelling a traumatic story to strangers.
Gibson said the program is built around early intervention with most perinatal mental health conditions treatable. She describes the support as the feeling that someone is there with you, “holding your hand almost and guiding you through coping tools and mechanisms that can really help support your family”. “We know that this is a really recoverable illness,” Gibson said. “If we get in early with early detection, early intervention and early support… then we know that we can set a family up for a life of thriving rather than just surviving.”
Access and matching
The Start Talking model is also built around access. A parent can speak to their GP, seek a mental health care plan and referral to Gidget Foundation, and then be connected with a clinician. The foundation tries to match each person with a clinician who has the right specialist experience for what they are going through. Clients can access up to 10 free clinical psychological sessions, with a compassionate fund available to support people beyond those first sessions when needed.
The team is spread across the country. “We have clinicians all across Australia,” Peterson said. “We’re in all of the states and territories now.” For parents in regional Australia, this means they are not limited to whoever happens to be available nearby.
Loneliness and support
“Becoming a new parent is, for a lot of people, one of the hardest things they’ll have to do,” Peterson said. “There’s so many challenges that new parents are up against, but just having that extra isolation is a huge thing. And we know that loneliness and feelings of loneliness do contribute to perinatal depression and anxiety.”
For Gidget, telehealth is not a lesser version of care. “If we get in early with early detection, early intervention and early support… then we know that we can set a family up for a life of thriving rather than just surviving,” Gibson said.
