Vita Berghout

Vita Berghout is a Co-morbidity Specialist providing a consultancy service and professional staff development and training across Eastern Mental Health Services in South Australia. She has completed both the Social Science and Social Work degrees, completing the Graduate Diploma in Addiction & Mental Health at the University of Adelaide in 2010. After receipt of several academic awards, she joined the Golden Key International Honour Society – University of South Australia Chapter in 2004, the University of Adelaide Chapter in 2013, and became a member of the Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and Other Drugs in 2015.

Vita began specialising in homelessness, drugs & alcohol and mental health in 2005, running a pilot co-morbidity project out of inner-city homeless services and Kuitpo, a Rehabilitation Unit situated in the Adelaide Hills. She has subsequently spent the past 10 years serving at the coal face within mental health services, with secondments to Street to Home and the Exceptional Needs Unit.

She has been a guest lecturer on the topics of mental health & drugs & alcohol with the Law Society of South Australia and The University of Adelaide Law School, sat on the Acute Unit Matters executive committee and the Youth Mental Health Service Implementation Group as the Co-morbidity Representative, and in 2012 was a panel member for the Risk Assessment & Management Symposium run by the University of South Australia and Department of Health.

She was a guest presenter at the 2013 “Perspectives on Mental Health and Addiction: Seeing ‘recovery’ through a different lens” conference, and more recently has been working together with the South Australian Network of Drug & Alcohol Services to provide Co-morbidity training workshops. She is currently also a member of the Triple Diagnosis group.