Our industry partnerships and collaborators

Industry and end users 

The Centre for Mental Health here at Swinburne partners with a range of organisations across many sectors. A selection of our industry partnerships include:  

• the Commonwealth Department of Health 
• the Department of Veterans' Affairs 
• the Department of Health and Human Services Victoria (and other states' health and human services departments) 
• clinical service providers (e.g. Alfred Health, St Vincent's Health) 
• the disability sector 
• mental health consumer/patient groups 
• families and carers 
• pharmaceutical, health device, and health information and community technology industries 
• health practitioners working in independent practice.

Our primary international links come from associations with the USA (UC Berkeley, Harvard, NIMH), Canada (UBC, CREST.BD), Israel, the Netherlands and the UK (Spectrum Centre). 

National collaborators

We collaborate with leading organisations across Australia. Explore a selection of our key collaborators.

Australian universities 

Our major university collaborations are within Victoria and include: 

• La Trobe University 
• University of Melbourne 
• Monash University 
• Deakin 
• RMIT 
• Florey Institute 
• Victoria University 
• Australian Catholic University 

We also collaborate nationally. The most significant of these collaborations include the University of New South Wales, University of Newcastle, Macquarie University, University of Western Australia, Murdoch University and Curtin University. 

Victoria's Clinical Mental Health Services 

Victoria's area mental health services are run by a number of hospital-based services. In metropolitan Melbourne these are: 

• Alfred Health 
• Austin Health 
• Eastern Health 
• Mercy Health 
• Monash Health 
• North Western Mental Health (part of Melbourne Health) 
• Peninsula Health 
• St Vincent's Health  

Over the past 2 years, we have established research relationships with all of these services, particularly St Vincent's Health and Alfred Health. 

St Vincent’s Health 

St Vincent's Health is a key collaborator on research into mental health across multiple projects. We collaborate with multiple departments at St Vincent's, including: Psychiatry, Psychology, Neurology and Neurosurgery.  

Projects include examining: the psychological and neurobiological processes that are involved in body image disorders; the efficacy of psychological therapies in those with serious mental illness and also with chronic medical conditions and novel pharmacological and brain stimulation therapies for those with mental health conditions. 

Alfred Health 

At the Alfred, Swinburne is a partner in the Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre which facilitates recruitment of clinical populations. At MAPrc we also run a specialist Voices Clinic which supports our hallucinations research program, and which provides postgraduate clinical psychology students placements in working with serious mental illness.  

Our research relationship with the Alfred has facilitated Swinburne's health teaching by developing an exclusive relationship with the Alfred for its clinical psychology student placements. 

Inner East ACCESS Health and Community and headspace Hawthorn 

Swinburne has longstanding research and clinical placement memoranda with Inner East Community Health, which is the lead agency for headspace Hawthorn. Professor Murray chairs the headspace Hawthorn consortium committee. 

These are relatively new linkages with significant potential for recruitment, translational research, partnership grants and student training experiences. Swinburne researchers are currently leading one mental health research project through headspace Hawthorn. 

Research throughout these clinical mental health services is vital not only for recruitment but also for long term dissemination of our research findings. Sites where we have conducted our clinical trials will be encouraged to take on board evidence-based novel therapies and researchers will be able to provide support and training to these sites. 

Victoria's mental health community support services 

A growth component of Victoria's mental health services is the non-government organisation-run Mental Health Community Support Service (MHCSS) sector, which provides recovery and rehabilitation services to persons with chronic mental health problems. 

We have established research relationships with each of the major providers in this area. these include: 

• Wellways Australia 
• Mind Australia 
• EACH 
• NEAMI 
• Uniting Care 
• Anxiety Recovery Centre Victoria (ARCVic) 
• Anxiety Disorders Association Victoria (ADAVIC) 
• Social firms Australia 
• CoHealth 

We now have relationships with MHCSS providers in every local authority area of Melbourne. We have a particularly close relationship with MI Fellowship, our main partner with the SMART research program, and with Uniting Care (Prahran Mission), which runs the Voices Vic peer support program for voice-hearers, with whom we have partnered on hallucinations research. 

Our research in the areas of mental health recovery and peer support are closely aligned with the values of this sector, and we are in a strong position to develop formal relationships with providers in this sector.