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If your life is in danger, please call 000

Local Rural Outreach Workers are here for you.

There are many things that can impact wellbeing and increase a person’s susceptibility to mental illness and even suicide in remote areas.

What do we offer?

MTHCS has a FREE service available to all residents of all ages in the catchment area.

This is not counselling. It is a navigation service to help access the right support in a timely manner. Rural Outreach Workers (ROWs) can walk beside and sit with people who need support with whatever is impacting their wellbeing.

Rural Outreach Workers are available by phone or text, or they can visit you at home for a confidential chat and cuppa.

Click here to read the full media release.

Early signs

If you're feeling overwhelmed, sad or moody, tired, fearful of worried about the safety of yourself or others.

Symptoms may include:

  • Having vivid or distressing dreams
  • Being unusually irritable or angry and/or restless and fidgety
  • Working too much or too little

When to reach out for help?

When these signs, feelings, thoughts or behaviours have gone on for more than two weeks and are beginning
to impact your day-to-day life. These might include:

  • Loss of interest in activities that are normally enjoyed
  • Avoiding others such as withdrawing from social networks, work or family
  • Behaving out of character
  • Feeling overwhelmed by tasks that would normally be done easily
  • Being unable to concentrate
  • Having increased concern for physical health issues including for the physical health of babies if a new parent
  • Regularly feeling sick and run down
  • Experiencing changes in sleep patterns, sleeping too much or too little
  • Changes in appetite (losing or gaining weight)
  • Increasing use of alcohol, cigarettes and/or drugs

How to access this service?

Call or text the Rural Outreach Workers for a chat or to organise a home visit anywhere in the Mallee Track, from Berriwillock, Sea Lake and Patchewollock to Ouyen, Murrayville and Underbool.

Rural Outreach Workers:

Renae Bonica
0429 090 942
Murrayville, Underbool and Ouyen

Simone Grayling
0492 001 181
Sea Lake and Ouyen

Referrals can be emailed to: row@mthcs.vic.gov.au

If this has raised issues for you, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or for emergency support call 000.

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