Mariska Meldrum didn't expect the birth of her first child to trigger a "huge episode" in her bipolar disorder.
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"When you are facing a mental illness, like I did after the birth of my first baby, and there are no psychiatrists available and there are no spots available in mental health units for mothers and babies, it can be really distressing," Ms Meldrum said.
"That's an issue facing many regional women who have bipolar or other mental health conditions."
But in a partnership between Monash University, Alfred Health and Cabrini Health, the new HER - Health, Education and Research - Centre in Melbourne will lead the way on women's mental health research and treatment advice for women "wherever you are in Australia".
Centre director Professor Jayashri Kulkarni said she hoped the work at HER would lead the way on new treatments that could be replicated and implemented Australia wide.
"It is about getting more resources ... more psychiatrists and more mental health trained nurses and GPs who are prepared to work in the rural sector," she said.
"That's where the research comes in, because we have to be and we are developing new treatments ... then being able to put that into clinics [and] education programs that will be able to take the new knowledge and deliver that to other health professionals so wherever you are in Australia, you could access the latest of the latest in terms of treatments.
"That's what HER Centre stands for."
Among the research, HER is looking gender-tailored treatments and interventions including hormone-based treatments for menopausal depression and treating women with new forms of oestrogen.
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Professor Kulkarni said isolation and access to specialist services were major challenges for regional women to find the appropriate care.
"We're doing work not just in general psychiatry but in women's mental health with special focus on hormone treatments and so on, so the access to things like specialist clinics [and] specialist treatments is more difficult in the rural sector," Professor Kulkarni said.
"About five years ago, we went to telehealth for the rural sector, so we have rural women ringing in and getting a consultation with us to try and work around this problem."
Research by the Women's Mental Health Alliance shows women experience twice as much depression as men, are four times more likely to experience anxiety and 12 times more likely to experience post traumatic stress disorders.
"All of these things got worse with the pandemic and ... for certain groups of women, including women in the rural areas, so really the pandemic took a problem and magnified it," Professor Kulkarni said.
HER is currently taking referrals from across Victoria.
For Ms Meldrum, the treatment she has received from the HER team has been "life-changing".
"For me, when I went to have a second baby, I wanted to get an expert opinion and my own psychiatrist couldn't get the guidance needed around the safety of medication and childbirth and breastfeeding that I needed," she said.
"I was referred to Professor Kulkarni at the time and I just had a one off consultation and she gave me all the guidelines and all the advice I needed to feel confident to go ahead and have another baby and that advice was life changing.
"I went on to have two more children and didn't become unwell."
