The Child and Youth Mental Health Service provide a comprehensive response to the varying needs of infants, children and young people with mental health problems or mental disorders and their families/carers in the community.

We focus on the mental health problems and disorders in infants, children and adolescents (aged 0 to 17 years) that:

• are severe, complex and enduring
• are likely to represent emerging or diagnosable mental disorders
• are not responding to interventions at other levels of care
• severely compromise their quality of life and impact developmental appropriate functioning
• are not responsive to treatment through other services (e.g. private psychiatrists)
• require coordination/integration across multiple services
• are likely to benefit from the range of interventions the Child and Youth ACU offers.

Conditions we treat

The mental health disorders and problems that we target, in collaboration with our key health partners, include:

• depression and other serious disorders of mood regulation
• non-accidental self-injury
• early psychosis and psychotic disorders
• eating disorders
• trauma-related problems
• serious disturbances of attachment and carer-child relationships
• complex anxiety disorders
• complex developmental and behavioural disorders
• emerging personality disturbances
• substance use disorders.

Accessing the service

Metro South Addiction and Mental Health Services can be contacted via:

• Phone: 1300 MH CALL (1300 64 22 55)
• Fax: 3078 2120

Referrals

Being referred into our service can be a stressful time for individual, carers and families. However, we are here to help you navigate the mental health service system and connect to the right service in a timely way.

Intake workers at our services will accept referrals from any member of the public. If you are concerned about a young person please contact us:

• Phone: 1300 MH CALL (1300 64 22 55)
• Fax: 3078 2120

If the young person is more appropriate to receive other supportive services instead of mental health support, the intake officer will recommend services that may be more suitable.

Services we provide

Inpatient services

We provide specialised inpatient care to children and young people from 13 to 17 years of age. Child and youth inpatient services are only provided at the Logan Hospital.

Community services

We have community clinics located at:

• Logan Central
• Cleveland
• Browns Plains
• Beenleigh.

We also provide an outreach clinic to Beaudesert region at the Beaudesert Hospital.

Specialised programs

We also have a number of specialised programs which include:

• Logan Evolve Therapeutic Service (Evolve TS) – This program is a collaborative partnership between Queensland Health and the Department of Communities. Evolve TS specialises in the treatment of infants, children and adolescents with complex mental health, trauma and attachment-related problems who are in the care of the Department of Communities.
• Parent-Infant Mental Health Program – This program provide clinical services to families that are at high risk of developing serious attachment disturbances for children between 0 to 3 years of age.
• Family Therapy Program – This program works with families with young people who are experiencing severe and/or complex mental health problems utilising family therapy as the primary intervention.
• Early Intervention Unit, including Ed-LinQ – This unit offers a range of mental health prevention and early intervention strategies including universal, targeted and indicated prevention to the community including schools.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health liaison positions – These positions provides cultural specific consultation to our mental health clinicians as well as cultural specific support to families of diverse cultural background in contact with our service.

Therapies

Our interventions may be targeted at the level of:

• individual child or adolescent
• family
• parent or carer
• parent/carer-child relationship
• group (child, adolescent or carer)
• school
• community
• service integration and coordination across multiple providers.

We provide psychotherapeutic treatments to children, adolescents and their carers. All treatments are informed by a wide range of evidence informed psychotherapy frameworks, including, but not limited to:

• systemic and family therapies
• cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
• solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT)
• expressive psychotherapies (play, art and music therapies)
• acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)
• dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT)
• mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)
• mentalization-based therapy (MBT)
• attachment-based therapies and carer-child relational therapies
• motivational interviewing
• narrative therapy
• psychodynamic psychotherapies.

Not all our clinicians are trained in all of these approaches. To the greatest extent possible, we attempt to tailor interventions balancing consumer and carer recovery goals and preference, formulation, and diagnosis with clinician training and experience, commonly integrating approaches from a number of the above-mentioned therapies.