A case for space: safe havens in the mental health system

When you walk into the Belconnen Safe Haven while experiencing mental distress, you won’t find clinical mental health assessments, mandatory referrals, or risk management protocols.

Instead, you’ll find a welcoming user-made space, places to relax or play, peer workers with lived experience, and something revolutionary in our medical system: the permission to simply exist.

Rather than ‘patients’ or ’clients’, visitors attending Safe Haven are considered guests.

“Guests will say to me, ‘I take my iPad, and I go sit on the couch in the Safe Haven’,” explains mental health researcher Professor Michelle Banfield at the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH).

“They know that if they want to talk to a peer worker they can ask, but if they just need to be there on the couch, that’s okay.”

It’s a radical departure from traditional mental health crisis intervention, and the results speak for themselves. Among more than 900 guests, distress levels on the Subjective Units of Distress Scale fell sharply, from an average of 71 out of 100 on arrival to just 42 upon leaving.

With such results, you might expect health ministers to be throwing money at the program. Instead, Banfield finds herself in a lasting battle to justify the existence of safe spaces that could save lives – including, potentially, her own.

“I am somebody who would use that”

Twenty-two years after walking into an emergency department in suicidal crisis and finding no one who could simply sit with her, Banfield is leading a project on safe spaces for suicide prevention – the solution she desperately needed.

“One of the reasons I took on this project is because when I looked at this model, I thought, ‘gee, I wish that existed when I needed that kind of help’,” she reflects.

“I am somebody who would use that Safe Haven.”

Her research focuses on evaluating Safe Haven services throughout Australia. The spaces tap into a population who wouldn’t otherwise seek help – those who find emergency departments too frantic, clinical services too threatening, or simply don’t trust the system.

“When you really follow that through to its end point, they’re your suicide statistics,” Banfield says bluntly.

“If people don’t access help at all, they are the people that are going to take their own lives.”

Challenging traditional care

Safe Havens may be delivering results, but within the health system, they’re still fighting for legitimacy.

“Our system is built around clinical framings,” Banfield explains.

“If you’re trained that this is what you do with somebody who is suicidal, and someone deviates from that protocol, the response is ‘no, no, you’re doing it wrong,’ instead of asking if there might be another way.”

That mindset can be hard to shift. Even with evidence showing the limits of suicide risk prediction and the harms of overly restrictive interventions, the belief that only clinical care is ‘real’ care runs deep.

Banfield’s research turns that thinking on its head. Using the RE-AIM framework (Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, Maintenance) and a co-designed evaluation tool – her team works with people who have lived experience to define success in their own terms.

The data is clear: Safe Havens ease distress and reach people who might otherwise never seek help, with over a third of participants saying they wouldn’t have sought support elsewhere.

However, impact alone isn’t enough to secure their future. Sustainability depends on strengthening the peer workforce – the heart of these spaces– through better training, supervision, and recognition. Without it, burnout looms.

There are signs of progress. The Australian Government has committed to establishing a National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Peer Workforce Association to strengthen training pathways, career structures and evidence-based practices.

Banfield’s team is also tackling one of the biggest barriers, perception. They plan to create accessible versions of their research for health professionals, highlighting what Safe Havens offer, the evidence behind them, and the role of peer workers.

She stresses they’re not intended to replace clinical services, but to stand alongside them.

“I see a psychologist on a regular basis,” Banfield says. “But in crisis? I’d need somebody just to walk besides who understands and listens.”

A place to just ‘be’

Banfield envisions a future where safe spaces are permanent fixtures in our mental health help landscape. This broader vision extends beyond crisis intervention to prevention – spaces where people can maintain connection before reaching crisis point.

Evidence from Melbourne safe spaces showed a preventative effect, with individuals visiting for coffee and conversation and staying well through human connection.

“In an ideal world, they should be available 24/7,” she says.

While we don’t live in an ideal world, but one with health systems often short on time and personal connection, Banfield continues fighting for recognition of Safe Havens and future funding.

She’s bringing evidence to back her personal conviction: that we all need a place where being human is enough.

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Anyone seeking connection and support can freely walk into the Belconnen Safe Haven.

For crisis support over the phone, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Find other urgent and crisis support services at the ANU Counselling and Wellbeing website.