Home And Away star launches E-Health website

Home and Away star Samara Weaving will be lending her support to the launch today at Parliament House of a new website that will help people find online treatment for depression.

Ms Weaving will discuss the importance of young people having access to trusted online health information. She will join Professor Helen Christensen from the ANU Centre for Mental Health Research (CMHR) for the launch of the Beacon website by Senator Kate Lundy. Beacon is a new interactive website that has been jointly developed by CMHR and supported by the Mental Health Council of Australia and is being launched during Mental Health Week.

Beacon is a world-first compilation of online mental and physical e-health programs from all over the world. It provides a portal for consumers, health professionals and members of the community to gain access to these e-programs, provides a description of each and a scientific rating of effectiveness. To date, Beacon has reviewed 100 programs across a range of categories including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, social anxiety and eating disorders.

“Online e-health programs can be very effective in the management of mental and physical disorders, and the programs are often free, user-friendly and can be completed at a time convenient to the user. However, these resources are often developed in university settings and may not be well known to the public. Beacon was developed to provide access for the community to high quality programs,” said Professor Christensen.

Beacon joins a suite of e-health programs from CHMR including MoodGYM, Ecouch, BluePages and BlueBoard.

You can visit the site at www.beacon.anu.edu.au

Posted 6 October 2009