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Share your insight. Shape the future of frontline mental health.

Stand out as an expert, your use voice, experience and expertise to create positive solutions and services for the frontline community.

Applications are now open to present at the 2026 Frontline Mental Health Conference, taking place 2–3 March 2026 at RACV Royal Pines Resort, Gold Coast, QLD.

Whether you’re a researcher, practitioner, peer worker, policymaker, or someone with lived experience, this is your opportunity to lead change and share your voice with a community committed to improving mental health outcomes for frontline workers.

Apply To Present

Why Present at FMHC 2026?

  • A Discounted Registration
    Secure your full conference registration at a reduced presenter rate.
  • Full Conference Access
    Attend all keynotes and concurrent sessions across both days.
  • Professional Exposure
    Your session promoted across ANZMHA’s channels and materials.
  • Custom Promo Tools
    Receive a personalised promo graphic and a 10% discount code to share.
  • Expand Your Network
    Meet sector leaders, peers and advocates at social events.
  • Wellbeing Program Access
    Take part in wellness activities designed to support you.
  • 5-Star Venue Experience
    Enjoy premium catering and facilities throughout the event.
  • On-Demand Replay
    Revisit all sessions online for 30 days post-event.

Build Your Reputation & Open New Doors

Many of our past concurrent presenters have progressed to keynote roles at ANZMHA events and beyond. Presenting at FMHC helps you gain public speaking experience, position yourself as a thought leader, and raise your professional profile within the mental health sector. This platform has led to collaborations, invitations, and career-changing connections.

Your submission should align with the 2026 conference theme:

Holding the Line Together: Advancing Frontline Mental Health Through Connection, Culture, and Leadership

We welcome proposals across the following topic areas:

Click to expand the topics below.

  1. Together in the Trenches: Strengthening Inter-Agency and Cross-Sector Collaboration for Frontline Mental Health
    • The trauma we share: case studies from bushfires, COVID, floods and other domestic responses
    • Cross-sector coordination that works: practical models for improving mental health outcomes
    • Psychological safety across disciplines: building trust, respect and support under pressure
    • Training together, coping together: joint simulations and wellbeing strategies that make a difference
    • Navigating culture clash: how diverse services, sectors and support roles can better understand each other
    • Bridging the gap: enabling external service providers and communities to provide informed support to the frontline towards collective care: sustainable structures for long-term inter-agency wellbeing

  2. The Ripple Effect: Family, Parenting, Caregiving & Relationships
    • Frontline families under pressure: how shift work, trauma, and unpredictability shape home life
    • From stress to strength: innovations in family resilience and post-traumatic growth
    • When frontline workers are caregivers too: navigating the dual demands of service and family life
    • Partners and children as part of the team: co-designing inclusive, family-centred support models
    • Making it work: balancing co-parenting, relationships, and wellbeing in high-intensity roles
    • New directions in support: showcasing emerging research, programs, and policies that meet families where they are
    • Intergenerational impact: helping children understand and process trauma in developmentally appropriate ways

  3. Stronger Systems, Thriving Teams: Transforming Organisational Practice for Frontline Wellbeing
    • Changing the system, not the person: building psychologically safe, learning-oriented, and restorative cultures
    • Organisational wellbeing audits: using data to assess and improve workplace mental health
    • Navigating moral tensions in complex systems: practical tools for leaders and teams
    • Co-design in action: engaging frontline voices in developing meaningful mental health strategies
    • Workforce design for wellbeing: planning and structures that prevent burnout and system overload
    • Culturally responsive care: embedding faith, spirituality, and cultural identity in organisational mental health strategies
    • Future-proofing the frontline: Supporting students, trainees and early-career workers across the professional lifecycle

  4. Innovative Approaches for Healing Trauma: Translating Research into Impact
    • Polyvagal theory in action: How polyvagal-informed practices are being applied in trauma recovery for frontline workers
    • Lifestyle and metabolic interventions: Evidence-based insights on nutrition, sleep, inflammation, and movement as adjuncts in trauma treatment
    • Neuromodulation with rigour: Exploring the science and application of TMS, neurofeedback, and other emerging technologies - what works, for whom, and when?
    • From research to results: Innovations in trauma treatment with demonstrated impact across clinical and operational settings
    • Psychedelic-assisted therapy - hope or hype?: Clarifying the evidence, risks, and current status of psychedelic treatments in trauma care
    • Integrative care models with evidence: Combining medical, psychological, and alternative supports into person-centred, research-informed care plans
    • Creative expression as recovery: Storytelling, art, and creativity in trauma healing - evaluating their therapeutic and cultural value
    • Myth-busting new modalities: What the research really says about "emerging" treatments - and what still needs to be proven

  5. Prevention, Intervention & Postvention: Rethinking Suicide in Frontline Settings
    • Shifting the dial: evidence of progress in suicide prevention across frontline contexts
    • After a suicide: postvention strategies that support individuals, families, and teams
    • Lived experience insights into suicide recovery and prevention
    • Peer-led and culturally competent approaches to suicide support
    • Organisational learning from loss: system-level responses to suicide and self-harm
    • The ripple effect of suicide: acknowledging and addressing broader impacts on families, clinicians, communities, and care systems
    • Gender-specific risks: What new research is telling us about suicide risk in women, and the role of reproductive and hormonal health
    • Addressing Pre-Existing Mental Health Conditions in the Frontline

  6. Enhancing Peer Power: Integrated, Scalable and Safe Peer Support Models
    • Professionalisation of peer support: tensions, opportunities and boundaries
    • Integrating peer officers, chaplains, and clinicians: Building a united model
    • Supervision, support and safeguards: caring for peer supporters
    • Peer support across disciplines: collaborative networks across states, jurisdictions and disciplines
    • Inclusive peer programs: LGBTQIA+, culturally diverse, neurodivergent peer models
    • Scaling peer support during large-scale events and disasters
    • Measuring what matters: evaluating outcomes, impact and effectiveness of peer support
    • Innovations and success stories from leading peer support models
    • Expanding reach: peer support models for volunteer responders and spontaneous teams

  7. Tools for the Frontline: Practical Skills for Mental Health and Wellbeing
    • Communication skills for peer, team, and one-on-one support conversations
    • Tools for self-assessment and spotting early warning signs
    • Building your own plan: mental health planning and safety strategies for high-pressure roles
    • When it’s not trauma – but still not okay: Practical tools for managing anxiety, depression, and alcohol misuse in frontline settings
    • Managing vicarious trauma, emotional overload, and dysregulation
    • Boundaries that work: protecting energy without disconnecting from others
    • Burnout tools: recognising, preventing, and recovering from burnout
    • Leading with care: helping leaders hold wellbeing conversations and respond to staff needs
    • Building mental health capability from day one: Supporting students and trainees for success and resilience

  8. Potentially Traumatic Events and Cumulative Trauma
    • Understanding the difference: acute vs chronic trauma in frontline roles
    • Psychological First Aid for traumatic events
    • Rebuilding after high-impact events: personal, team, and community strategies
    • Early intervention for cumulative stress build-up
    • Supporting teams through collective grief and loss
    • Organisational responsibility following critical events
    • Off-duty incidents and their impact

  9. The Mental Health Multiplier: Leadership That Lifts the Frontline
    • Building mental health capability and literacy in leaders
    • Developing trauma-informed leadership capabilities
    • Peer-led leadership mentoring: creating psychologically safe leadership pipelines
    • Managing embitterment, burnout, and moral injury in leadership roles
    • Decision fatigue and leadership exhaustion: sustaining leader wellbeing
    • Aligning leadership values and actions in times of moral complexity
    • The role of emotionally intelligent leadership in culture transformation

  10. Expanding the Conversation: From Moral Injury to Embitterment
    • Moral injury in focus: from ethical exposure to the burden of judgement-based decisions
    • Owning the call: how life-and-death choices impact identity and mental health
    • Understanding embitterment: emerging evidence on workplace injustice and moral distress
    • Preventing moral harm: shaping cultures through leadership, supervision, and training
    • Systemic repair: what organisational responses to moral injury should look like
    • Embedding moral resilience: preparing workers for ethical complexity
    • Treatment and recovery: narrative, moral repair, and emerging psychotherapies

  11. Burnout, Grief, and Grit: Frontline Mental Health in an Era of Climate Crisis
    • Responding to repeated disasters: cumulative trauma and burnout in climate-affected roles
    • The long road to recovery: supporting mental health during extended disaster aftermaths
    • Eco-anxiety and vicarious environmental grief: the emotional toll of frontline exposure
    • Adapting mental health supports to climate realities: what’s needed as disasters escalate
    • Innovation on the ground: emerging tools and programs addressing climate-driven fatigue
    • Anticipating the future: workforce resilience planning for worsening climate scenarios
    • Learning from lived experience: insights from frontline responders in climate-impacted regions

  12. Stigma, Identity, and Meaning Making: Challenges and Strengths
    • Unpacking stigma in frontline professions: barriers to help-seeking
    • Addressing the “tough it out” mindset: shifting cultures through vulnerability and connection
    • Storytelling for stigma reduction: lived experience perspectives
    • Creating psychologically safe spaces for vulnerability and strength
    • Finding meaning in service: how purpose, pride and belonging protect mental health
    • Making sense of suffering: how meaning-making supports recovery and growth
    • When identity is challenged: supporting transition and recovery when frontline roles change

Presentation Styles

Oral Presentation

Take to the stage and present to the audience in a 15 or 25 minutes speaking session with 5 minutes for questions.

Workshop Presentation

Keep the attention of attendees via engaging, hands-on learning experience in a 60-minute workshop.

Panel Presentation

Panel presentations bring together views from a group of presenters into a discussion of innovative ideas, current topics, and relevant issues. Each panel session will run for 60 minutes and will consist of at least 3 panel members.

Poster Presentation

Visually showcase your research or services via a printed poster, displayed in the conference exhibition area for the duration of the conference. A dedicated 15-minute poster session is included in the conference program. Posters also displayed virtually to e-delegates.

Key Dates

Presentation applications close: Friday 22 August 2025


Successful applicants will be notified in late September 2025.