What is the Cardiac Wellbeing Program?
The Cardiac Wellbeing Program™ is an Australia wide service and forms a key pillar of the Australian Centre for Heart Health (ACHH). The Cardiac Wellbeing Program™ offers an integrated and comprehensive approach to enhancing the wellbeing of people who have had a cardiac event. The Program provides psychological, social and behavioural support to cardiac patients and their families. The Cardiac Wellbeing Program™ is the most comprehensive psychocardiology program in Australia.
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Why do we need a Cardiac Wellbeing Program?
After an acute cardiac event, almost all patients experience the cardiac blues: one in three experience severe anxiety and one in five experience severe depression. Rates of anxiety and depression among people with heart disease are up to four times those seen in the general population. Unfortunately, few cardiac patients receive integrated care for their physical and mental health concerns. Indeed, many cardiac patients do not receive any support for the emotional and mental aspects of their condition. It is estimated that fewer than one in four cardiac patients with major depression are diagnosed. Only one in two of these patients go on to receive treatment for their depression. Encouragingly, effective treatments are available for anxiety and depression. These treatments also assist patients in making lifestyle changes to help their recovery after an acute cardiac event.
The Cardiac Wellbeing Program™ provides a one-stop-shop for patients and their families to receive integrated psychosocial and behavioural support. This support can improve their physical and mental wellbeing and reduce their risk of future cardiac events and hospitalisations.
What services does the Cardiac Wellbeing Program offer?
SERVICES
The Cardiac Wellbeing Program of the Australian Centre for Heart Health provides specialist behavioural and psychological support to people who have had an acute cardiac event, and their families. Everything we do in the Cardiac Wellbeing Program is evidence-based, drawing on the Centre’s own world-leading research and that of other experts in cardiac-related behavioural and psychological support.
The Centre has three major components to its Cardiac Wellbeing Program, which are all available Australia-wide: Back on Track, Teleheart, and the Cardiac Counselling Clinic.
Back on Track is a free, flexible 5-session online program to help people get back on track after a heart attack or surgery. The program is designed to help people make lifestyle changes to support behavioural and emotional recovery and, in doing so, reduce the chance of another event. The program is accessible anywhere and anytime on smartphone, computer or tablet. The program includes sessions on healthy eating, increasing physical activity, smoking cessation, and emotional recovery. It is designed to give people self-management strategies, including clarifying personal goals and values, weighing up pros and cons of change, identifying barriers and enablers, and making ‘action plans’ for what to do, and ‘coping plans’ for how to do it. This is a good program to do with a partner or carer.
Teleheart is a free, flexible 5-session, telephone-delivered program also designed to support behavioural and emotional recovery. Again, the modules focus on healthy eating, physical activity, smoking cessation, and emotional recovery. The Teleheart telephone sessions are delivered by an expert facilitator using the same evidence-based personalised self-management strategies as provided in Back on Track. Both programs are supported by a participant workbook. People are free to choose the sessions that appeal to them. Download the information sheet here.
The Cardiac Counselling Clinic provides specialist face-to-face and online psychological support for cardiac patients who require more intensive support, particularly those experiencing anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress, as well as those struggling with lifestyle change. The Clinic provides support through a team of cardiac psychologists. Counselling can be accessed by obtaining a mental health or chronic disease management plan from a GP. Alternatively, the sessions are offered on a fee for service basis; or may be covered by private health insurance or bulk-billed under new COVID-19 Medicare arrangements. Download the information sheet here.
To access any of the services of the Cardiac Wellbeing Program, contact the ACHH by email: wellbeing@australianhearthealth.org.au or phone: (03) 9326 8544.
To view the Clinical Governance document for the Cardiac Wellbeing Program, click here .