Conversation Starter Presentation
Women who use alcohol in pregnancy and people living with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) experience stigma, which can negatively impact screening, diagnosis, access to services and quality of life. Little is known about current approaches to address stigma relating to these groups and the intervention outcomes. This review aims to explore approaches to address stigma relating to alcohol use in pregnancy and FASD and the outcomes of these approaches.

This scoping review included peer-reviewed studies, published from January 2015 to May 2025, that implemented an intervention to address stigma relating to alcohol use in pregnancy or FASD. Extracted data included study characteristics, intervention details and key outcomes. Nine studies met the inclusion criteria. Interventions to address stigma included community programs (n=3), mobile Health interventions (n=3) and healthcare provider training (n=3). Two studies aimed to reduce stigma as a primary outcome, and seven studies included stigma-reduction as a secondary outcome within broader educational or service provision. The studies provided qualitative evidence of stigma reduction across several domains: self-stigma (n=5), public stigma (n=4), structural stigma (n=1) and stigma by association (n=1).

Few stigma interventions have been developed specifically for alcohol use in pregnancy or FASD. Therefore, because addressing stigma was predominantly a secondary focus, most studies lacked objective indications of stigma reduction. The use of standardised measures for the evaluation of stigma could strengthen assessment of effectiveness.

Approaches to address stigma in alcohol use in pregnancy and FASD are relatively underdeveloped. Further research is needed to examine how interventions can be scaled for broader implementation and to evaluate their effectiveness to improve health outcomes related to alcohol use in pregnancy and FASD.

Conversation Starter Presentation
Context:
The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), supported by the Tasmanian Government, has planned and implemented a campaign addressing the link between alcohol and mental health.

The relationship between alcohol and mental health is complex. Alcohol can cause or contribute to feelings of depression and anxiety, and can disrupt sleep, with potential short and long-term consequences for mental wellbeing.

The campaign aims to increase awareness of the link between alcohol and mental health; increase awareness of Australia's Alcohol Guidelines; and support Tasmanians to reduce the amount they drink.

Methods:
Pre-campaign, FARE surveyed the alcohol knowledge, behaviours and intentions of 850 Tasmanian adults, and tested potential campaign messages.

Planning involved input from people with lived experience, experts in the fields of alcohol and other drugs, mental health and public health, and researchers.

As the first known Australian prevention campaign on this issue, FARE tested an animated face-brain concept which resonated positively with the audience. 'Be Nice to Brain' launched in November 2024.

Due to limited resources, the campaign runs solely on Meta channels, supported by a 'Be Nice to Brain' website.

Outcomes:
After seven months the digital campaign has delivered more than six million impressions and 21,000 website views.

Key learnings to date include the value of local insights from steering committee members, broad stakeholder consultation, audience testing, and use of 'vox-pop' videos to boost engagement.

Challenges include gaining media traction and engaging with people to share their relevant story related to alcohol.

Future actions:
Reducing mental health impacts from alcohol by digital awareness campaign is a promising but so-far underexplored public health activity. Implementing this project in a small jurisdiction has provided an ideal environment to pilot the approach. Given a positive evaluation, the campaign could be scaled-up for a wider audience. Project evaluation is due July 2026.

Conversation Starter Presentation
Investigating young adults’ media mental health literacy: A questionnaire-based study
Background:
Depression which affects more than 300 million people globally is particularly impactful among adults aged 18 to 30. Despite this prevalence, depression is highly stigmatised with media representations and low public awareness contributing to negative perceptions.
This study investigates whether patterns of media use affect young adults' media mental health literacy and what key demographic factors correlate with media mental health literacy levels.
This study aims to contribute to improved media coverage, foster a better understanding of mental illness and encourage appropriate uptake of mental health services.
Methods:
We conducted a cross-sectional survey using a structured questionnaire distributed to over 1000 young adults aged 18–30. The questionnaire gathered demographics (including gender, education level, region, occupation), media usage patterns (including media platform selection and frequency), and applied a media mental health literacy scale.
To improve response rates, the survey link was distributed via social media platforms (e.g., WeChat, Weibo, and RedNote). All participants were offered an information statement to provide informed consent. The survey was completed anonymously.
Result:
A total of 736 questionnaires were collected in this study. After excluding those with a negative response to the informed consent question, 708 valid questionnaires remained, providing an eligibility rate of 96.2%.
We are using correlation analysis and descriptive statistics to examine the relationship between, demographics, media usage and media mental health literacy.
Conclusion:
Preliminary findings suggest that the choice of media platform influences media mental health literacy, and that high use of social media may correlate with lower media health literacy. This study highlights the need for mental health education for young people, particularly regarding purposeful media consumption.

Conversation Starter Presentation
Context and Aim: How do we ensure that lived and living experience meaningfully shapes mental health policy? Beyond Blue’s advocacy is informed by insights from community – through our service delivery, research and through our Blue Voices community – a group of 3,000 people who have lived and living experience (LLE) of mental health challenges and suicide, and their supporters who want to make a difference. Amplifying their voices in our advocacy helps us drive person-centered change and gives them opportunities to influence policy outcomes.

Methods and Analysis: Beyond Blue engages Blue Voices members through focus groups, interviews and surveys on a range of policy issues, including mental health system reform, cost of living challenges and social media regulation. Engagements are guided by the principles of safety, respect, inclusion, trust, transparency, collaboration, and mutuality and value the diversity of people’s experiences across cultures, identities and journeys.

Outcomes: Beyond Blue’s submissions to policy consultations center the unique perspectives and solutions shared by Blue Voices members and our recommendations for change harness their expertise to improve the systems that have failed to meet their needs. In 2024 and 2025, their contributions shaped Beyond Blue’s input into the Review of the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement, Tasmania’s 20-Year Preventative Health Strategy, and the NSW Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy among others.

Future Actions: When people share their stories and experience, we have responsibility to act. More work is needed at all levels of the mental health system to meaningfully and consistently embed LLE across design, delivery and monitoring. Beyond Blue values the community’s generous contributions, and is committed to continuous improvement in the way we partner with them to deliver impactful mental health advocacy.

Rapid Fire Presentation
Digital platforms are increasingly promoted as accessible preventive supports for perinatal mental health, offering privacy, flexibility, and broad reach. However, design and delivery often fails to reflect the cultural and social contexts of migrant women. Instead, many encounter systemic barriers including limited language access and digital exclusion. This co-produced study explored how migrant women engage with existing digital perinatal mental health resources and identified opportunities to strengthen equity by tailoring design and delivery to their lived realities.
[Methods/Analysis]
Focus groups and interviews were conducted with migrant women from Chinese, Arabic, and Indian-language speaking communities, supported by interpreters and consumer advisors, to explore their engagement with five Australian digital perinatal mental health websites. Participants shared their experiences highlighting both barriers and enablers to digital engagement. Thematic analysis was used to reflect women’s lived realities and collective experiences in navigating perinatal mental health websites.
[Outcomes]
Participants expressed a preference for content on digital websites in their first language. Poor translations, hidden options, and complex navigation limited trust and use. Participants strongly preferred visual and audio formats (e.g., videos, podcasts) that reflected their cultures, rather than text-heavy or overly clinical designs. Participants appreciated the privacy and flexibility of digital tools but noted inequities in device access, internet availability, and digital literacy.
[Future actions]
To build equity in preventive perinatal mental health, digital platforms should be co-designed with migrant women, drawing on their lived experiences. Priorities include integrating digital resources early in the antenatal journey, improving integration between digital and primary care supports (e.g. GPs and midwives), ensuring multilingual and culturally responsive formats and addressing systemic barriers to digital access to further support engagement. By centering community voices and collaboration between health systems, social supports and migrant communities, digital tools can become trusted, accessible, and empowering resources that strengthen perinatal mental health.

Rapid Fire Presentation
Context & Aim:
Digital platforms such as YouTube increasingly shape mental health awareness, literacy, and stigma in Australia. However, existing content often lacks cultural relevance, accuracy, and meaningful engagement for CALD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) populations. Given the rapidly evolving digital landscape, this review provides timely insights into how YouTube can be leveraged to promote culturally inclusive mental health content for Australian audiences. This rapid review examines global mental health representations on YouTube to inform culturally valid, inclusive, and effective digital mental health promotion strategies.

Methods & Analysis:
A structured search of PubMed and Scopus using relevant keywords and MeSH/subject terms identified approximately 40 peer-reviewed review articles. The articles were thematically analysed to examine content type, engagement strategies, cultural representation, and attention to mental health literacy, stigma, and CALD inclusion.

Outcomes:
Findings indicate a predominance of high-engagement, easily consumable video content, but with variable accuracy and cultural sensitivity. Personal testimonies and psychoeducational content dominate, with limited tailoring to CALD audiences. Storytelling and visual metaphors enhance engagement, whereas content neglecting cultural nuance may reinforce stigma or exclusion.

Future Actions:
Future directions involve co-designing YouTube content with CALD communities to ensure cultural validity, engaging students and community collaborators in video creation under mentorship to build capacity and authenticity, piloting locally produced short videos to evaluate reach, comprehension, and stigma reduction, and integrating digital content creation into prevention policies and community mental health frameworks to ensure sustainability.

Rapid Fire Presentation
Abstract: Old School Night Out: Strengthening rural connection through music and community

Context and Aim
Social isolation in rural communities can impact mental wellbeing and community cohesion. The Grit and Resilience Program’s “Old School Night Out” rural tour was designed to address this by bringing people together through music, nostalgia, and shared experience in local township halls.

Methods and Analysis
Launched in 2024 following a successful pilot, the tour visited four rural townships, Springhurst, Edi Upper, Eldorado, and Bobinawarrah, hosting inclusive, family-friendly events featuring live music, dancing, and community-led catering. Each event was co-delivered with local hall committees and supported by the Grit and Resilience Program, clubs, groups, and the band Sweet Buzz. Attendance, feedback, and social media engagement were tracked to assess impact. The 2025 tour has expanded its reach to four new locations, continuing the model.

Outcomes
Over 400 people attended across the 2024 tour, with many events drawing intergenerational participation, often four generations of a family. Feedback highlighted the joy of reconnecting, the relaxed atmosphere, and the value of celebrating local spaces. Social media reach exceeded 10,000 across platforms. The events increased visibility of the Grit and Resilience Program and strengthened ties between residents and local groups.

Future Actions
The 2025 Old School Night Out tour marks the second iteration of this initiative within the Wangaratta LGA. While the tour continues to build community connection and showcase the value of local leadership, the program will shift focus and rather than completing a third tour, the Program will finalise and publish a how-to guide to support other communities in independently delivering similar events. This resource will be made available on the RCoW website, offering practical tools, templates, and insights drawn from two years of delivery. The model remains a replicable, low-cost approach to preventive mental health promotion in rural settings, grounded in co-design, local ownership, and celebration of place.

Rapid Fire Presentation
• What is the problem/issue that requires action? [Context and Aim]
Mental Health challenges are an increasingly serious problem in Australia and internationally. According to the National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing, approximately 43% of Australians will experience a mental disorder at some point in their lives, and almost one in four Australians are currently living with one. This presentation describes a new psychological paradigm, developed by the presenter, which supports the systematic and strategic development of valuable mental health prevention programs and associated promotion and research (McKenzie, 2021).
• What do we know or have we learned to address this problem/issue, and how has this finding been derived? [Methods and Analysis]

The Australian Psychological profession is unable to respond adequately to our rapidly increasing and very well documented mental health challenges, and their human costs. We urgently need to respond to our mental health epidemic by improving our understanding of the vital need of preventive mental health, and by systematically expanding, across disciplines and stakeholders, our preventive mental health prevention and promotion capacities.

• How has this been used in practice? [Outcomes]

Positive psychology has provided a useful paradigm for facilitating preventive mental health programs, promotion and research, by focusing on building wellbeing and resilience, rather than `fixing’ mental illness. There are potential problems with the paradigm however in that it can result in people feeling guilty if they are not always positive, and not realize that adversity can actually be valuable for their mental health.

• What actions should we take in the future to address the problem/issue? [Future actions]

The Reality Psychology paradigm helps to protect people’s mental health not by protecting them from life challenges, but by helping them grow in response to them.
Key principles and programs include:
• Psycho immunisation – the psychological equivalent to physical immunisation - encouraging exposure to small life challenges to help people respond to and benefit from large ones,
• Real resilience – from exposure to and mastery of rather than avoidance of real life experiences,
• Real mindfulness – taking mindfulness back to its origins - of helping people to be aware of and accept reality, as it really is.

Reference
McKenzie, S. (2022). Reality Psychology - A New Perspective on Wellbeing, Mindfulness,
Resilience and Connection. Springer-Verlag, Singapore.

Rapid Fire Presentation
LightsOut is an innovative, evidence-based grief education program shaped by lived experience. Delivered via an accessible online platform, LightsOut aims to equip people with tools that leverage personal death awareness, guiding individuals on a self-development journey, and building skills in grief literacy, emotional resilience, and self-confidence, while helping participants find meaning and draw on their strengths (Minty et al., 2023; UK RC2022).
Grief disproportionately affects groups such as young people, First Nations Australians, and people from diverse ethnic backgrounds (Rodríguez Herrero et al., 2021). Research consistently shows that bereavement can have significant impacts on population groups due to factors like cultural context, social support, and pre-existing vulnerabilities (Atkinson 2013; Ortega-Williams et al., 2021; Sherwood, 2015).
In Australia, the public health burden of bereavement touches nearly all children by age 16 (Dawson et al., 2023; Lichtenthal et al. 2024 (Lancet)). Additionally, 1 in 20 young people face the death of a parent before 18 – affecting their self-esteem, confidence, independence, and sense of security (NGCC, 2025; Rodríguez H et al., 2021). This can influence young people's progress at school. Evidence also suggests that suicide negatively affects between 6 and 60 individuals, a figure considered underestimated (Rivart et al., 2021).
Despite the prevalence and impact of grief, accessible education remains limited. LightsOut addresses this by providing an online Grief Education Program that can be integrated into senior school curricula and used by individuals, communities, and for professional development. This public health approach opens conversations about grief, builds emotional skills, and reduces death-related anxiety.
The presentation will outline the rationale behind LightsOut, focusing on how lived experience and grief skills protect mental health. It will cover the program’s evidence-based approach and its use in individual, community, professional, and undergraduate settings to prepare people for roles involving grief.