Graduate Certificate of Mental Health Nursing

With around 42% of Australians* experiencing a mental health condition at some time in their life, there is significant government and industry focus on growing and fostering the mental health workforce. Designed with flexibility for practicing nurses, Deakin’s Graduate Certificate of Mental Health Nursing will provide you with the advanced practical skills and knowledge to launch, or advance, your practice in mental health.

Developed in consultation with our key industry partners, you’ll gain the comprehensive theoretical and advanced practical skills needed to work with consumers, carers and supporters in any setting where mental health intervention occurs. You’ll graduate with an advanced understanding of holistic nursing assessment, major mental health conditions, person-centred approaches, therapeutic and pharmacological interventions.

Do you want to enhance your career while improving the lives of people living with a mental health condition?

Help deliver the care that an increasing number of Australians need each year. With Deakin’s Graduate Certificate of Mental Health Nursing you’ll understand the core, foundational, and consumer-centric mental health concepts necessary to work within the multidisciplinary teams supporting consumers, carers and supporters.

In this one-year part-time course, you’ll undertake four core units via Deakin’s premium interactive learning platform.

You’ll gain an advanced understanding of comprehensive nursing assessment and the fundamental role that it plays in psychiatric and mental health nursing. You will learn to recognise the biological, psychological, social and spiritual components of an individual’s life, and how these can positively and negatively influence their mental health. Build on your existing skills with course content and assessments designed to facilitate advanced recognition and response to altered mental states and clinical presentations; develop comprehensive understanding of the experiences of vulnerable populations while also exploring high and low prevalence mental health conditions including, psychotic disorders, personality disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety disorders.

Expanding on these foundations you’ll examine and learn how to apply contemporary and effective person-centred therapeutic interventions; working with consumers, carers and supporters on their recovery journey. Students will explore trauma-informed care, principles of recovery-oriented nursing practice and the role of peers, carers and families in supporting consumers with mental health challenges. Contemporary mental health treatment calls for a combination of nursing interventions that treat symptoms, manage psychological distress and support and foster consumer wellbeing and resilience. You’ll gain a deep understanding of both pharmacologic and talk therapies that underpin current mental health nursing practices, including the quality use of psychotropic medications such as antipsychotic, antimanic, anxiolytic, and antidepressant medications; as well as person-centred approaches to talk therapy, such as cognitive behaviour therapy and dialectical behaviour therapy.

As a graduate of the Graduate Certificate of Mental Health Nursing you’ll have the skills and knowledge to enhance your mental health nursing career as a Registered Psychiatric Nurse (RPN), senior clinician, or step into a leadership role across a range of community and inpatient settings.

Upon successful completion of this course you will have the option of specialising further by continuing on to the Graduate Diploma of Mental Health Nursing and will have already completed four credit points of core units from the diploma course.

*(People aged 16–85 years) National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020-2022.

• Begin the application process

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• Check entry requirements

  Entry requirements differ depending on your degree or country of residence. Before starting your application, read through the entry requirements on the course page entry requirement tab.

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• Certify supporting documents

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  Be sure to attach all requested supporting documentation, otherwise your application could be delayed. If you get your application in early, this gives us more time to arrange visas and accommodation if you need them.

• Submit your application

  Depending on your nationality and country of residence, you can submit your application directly to Deakin through our online international student application service StudyLink Connect or through a Deakin authorised agent.