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Your donation will help us support thousands of Australians living with, or affected by complex mental health issues including personality disorder.

Project Air is a research, training and clinical strategy established to improve treatment for people with personality disorder, their families and carers, schools and communities supporting them. It partners with services to help improve and enhance treatment. Your donation can be used to improve the quality and access to high quality treatment. It can be used to contribute to scientific discoveries enhancing detection, early intervention and rapid pathways to recovery. It could assist project air in its important outreach support to remote and rural services through its care review support program. It could fund original research studies and PhD scholars to work with our senior team to investigate a particular area.

Some fast facts

• In the health system, people with personality disorders present in significant numbers to Emergency Departments as well as to Mental Health and Drug and Alcohol services.
• Personality disorders, particularly borderline disorder, represent a significant treatment challenge for mental health services, in part because of the severity of the disorder, but also because of the high prevalence.
• Approximately one quarter of emergency mental health presentations and inpatient admissions are people with personality disorders.
• Along with the high prevalence is the high severity of problems, which put considerable strain on mental health services people with a personality disorder are at increased risk of suicide and self-harm, and frequently have contact with, and pose difficult management issues for, a number of agencies, including Health, Police, Corrections, and Housing.
• Providing evidence based treatments leads to significant cost-benefits. In addition to benefits to patients from increased wellbeing and higher productivity and relationships, costs to services reduced when well treated.
• According to the Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Well-Being, 4.8% of the Australian full-time workforce has a personality disorder.
• Lost work productivity due to mental disorders, such as personality disorders and substance-related disorders, contributes a loss of AUD$2.7 billion each year.

Project Air researchers are working to develop robust, effective and evidence-based programs that reach people Australia wide – no matter how remote they may be - and improve mental health outcomes.

If you would like to talk to us about meaningful giving and how you would like to see it contribute to the work of Project Air, please contact our Executive Officer Pat Frencham by phone on (02) 4221 4045 or by email at patf@uow.edu.au.

Programs

Programs such as ‘Project Air for Schools’ have developed an early intervention models in schools and child and youth community health services which have improved responses to young people with self-harm, suicide and emerging personality disorders.

Another example is our intervention ‘Working with Young People with Complex Mental Health issues’ which was designed to assist clinicians working with young people with complex mental health issues, including personality disorder, trauma history, self-harm, suicidal behaviour and difficulties with affect, identity and relationships.

How your donation will help

Your donation will help programs like the above, to improve mental health outcomes for all Australians. For example it could:

1. Fund a PhD scholar to work towards new scientific discoveries, developing more online interventions or even building models for developing virtual clinics.
2. Fund the establishment of a Consumer, Family and Carer Advisory Service, a free online and telephone support and counselling service staffed by trained mental health professionals. Project Air is the first in the world to develop and evaluate in a randomised controlled clinical trial an approach for supporting family members, parents and carers through guided information, education and support. Consumers, family and carers often reach out to us for support when they are feeling most vulnerable, whether it be for more information, counselling, guidance on treatment options or referral pathways to health professionals with expertise in diagnosis and treatment of personality disorders. We have lots of information on our website but are currently are unable to offer this important service to such at risk clientele.
3. Sponsor consumers, family and carers to attend the annual Consumer, Family and Carer Day which forms part of our International Conference on Personality Disorders at the University of Wollongong. People with lived experience and family and carers share their stories and attendees get to hear about the latest research in the recovery field and to voice their views on issues central to the treatment of personality disorders. Attendance fees are kept to a minimum and just cover costs however many people are unable to attend for financial reasons, especially those on pensions or Newstart allowance.
4. Fund community information forums in regional and remote regions. These ‘travelling road show’ community forums on understanding complex mental health issues including personality  disorder have proved invaluable for families, partners & carers, and health professionals. They aim to increase awareness and de-stigmatise personality disorder and assist in understanding personality disorder and the impact of caregiving on family, partner and carer wellbeing, managing crisis situations and challenging behaviours, evidence-based treatment options and what to expect, and self-care and supporting each other.