Beyond diagnosis: What else matters to clients’ health and wellbeing?

Mental health starts in our families, in our schools and workplaces, in our playgrounds and parks, and in the air we breathe and water we drink. The more psychologists understand and take account of these social determinants of all aspects of health, the more opportunities we will have and the better equipped we will be to help people optimise their mental health and wellbeing.

Social determinants of health (SDoH) are the circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work, and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness. These circumstances are in turn shaped by a wider set of forces: economics, social policies and politics (WHO, 2014). The social determinants of health include education, employment and working conditions, built environment, physical environment, housing, gender, culture, ethnicity, safety, social connectedness, income, early childhood development, health and social services.

Psychologists make up the largest proportion of mental health professionals in the Australian workforce today. We can therefore collectively be a major contributor to community wellbeing. Yet levels of mental illness continue to rise. It’s time for Australian psychologists to lead the way in curbing this rise, and tackling the social determinants of health is a good place to start.

Adopting an SDoH approach can assist psychologists to expand the way we think about mental health to include how to help people keep it, not just how to get it back. Reflecting on diverse applications of an SDoH approach can assist psychologists to embed this framework in everyday practice and improve outcomes for the clients and communities we serve.

The webinar series 'Beyond diagnosis – what else matters?' (see below) aims to demonstrate the value of an SDoH approach in everyday psychological practice, and to present applications of a resource developed by the APS Public Interest team to assist psychologists to incorporate an SDoH approach into their practice. A range of practitioners will share their experiences of using the SDoH resource from their diverse practice perspectives, including in: working with young people; working with clients impacted by systems of violence and discrimination; in rural, regional, remote and Indigenous communities; and workplace policies and contexts.