Educators are responding to the increasing need for all nurses to be able to care for people experiencing mental health issues.

From 2009 onwards, CQU's undergraduate nursing programs in Mackay, Rockhampton, Bundaberg and Noosa, and by distance education, will incorporate a completely revamped mental health subject and new textbook. And from 2010, they will also boost the mental health aspects incorporated into a wide range of other nursing subjects.

Professor Brenda Happell

Central Queensland University's Professor of Contemporary Nursing Brenda Happell said mental health content within most undergraduate nursing courses has previously been inadequate.

"Mainstreaming of mental health services within the general healthcare sector and the disproportionately high prevalence of mental health problems within general health, means that increasingly all nurses are required to care for people experiencing mental health issues within all healthcare settings," Professor Happell said.

She also said mental health nursing needed to be introduced much earlier in the curricula so stereotypical views of people with mental illness could be challenged.

Professor Happell said CQU was employing a project officer to implement the changes in conjunction with a steering committee including involvement by mental health service consumers and carers and an Indigenous Mental Health worker.

"Mental health consumers and carers will be provided every opportunity to participate actively in all stages of the project," she said.

Professor Brenda Happell

"They will be represented on the Steering Committee and will be active contributors to the development of the revised content. They will also be employed to deliver specific aspects of the subjects when they are implemented."

Professor Happell, who is a mental health academic and researcher, welcomed the project involvement by her fellow CQU mental health specialists Dr Lorna Moxham, Gerry Dares and Julie Bradshaw, along with external consultant Cath Roper, a consumer academic from the Centre for Psychiatric Nursing in Victoria.