ACT's first Safe Haven cafe opens in Belconnen

He got used to speaking with clinicians, doctors and psychologists but he really craved the support of somebody who had gone through something similar.

"There's so many things that are going on that you've never experienced before and it can be quite scary," Mr Martin said.

"When you're in the thick of stress walking into a clinical setting can sometimes be a bit overwhelming."

Mr Martin hopes he can use his experience to provide support to someone who is going through similar struggles at the ACT's first Safe Haven cafe, which opened in Belconnen on Friday.

Safe Haven is a comfortable space where people who need support for their mental health can drop-in to seek help from peer support workers, such as Mr Martin, in managing their distress.

The cafes are designed to reach people before they hit a crisis point. It's a non-clinical alternative to Canberra's overwhelmed and burdened emergency department.

In the last financial year there were close to 5000 mental health type presentations at Canberra Health Services emergency departments, with an average stay of almost 10 hours.

"The real key to a safe haven is that it provides an opportunity for people to seek help at an earlier point in their mental health journey," ACT Minister for Mental Health Emma Davidson said.

"So before they reach the kind of crisis where they need to go to emergency or need an inpatient stay, it provides an opportunity for some to realise 'you know what, I need some extra help'."

The cafe will be run by Stride, a mental health charity and organisation that runs specialist mental health services across the country. ACT Health and the Capital Health Network are also in partnership for the Safe Haven pilot.

Safe Haven has been established by people who have experienced problems with their mental health and many of the peer support workers are people with lived experience.

While the Safe Haven pilot is ongoing, the Australian National University will be conducting a study to analyse the effectiveness of safe spaces in the ACT and NSW.

The ANU received a $1.35 million grant for the project, which will be led by Associate Professor Michelle Banfield.

Associate Professor Banfield has bipolar disorder and when she was 27 years old presented to an emergency department feeling suicidal. She said the department was completely overwhelming.

"Emergency departments are not nice for anyone experiencing heightened emotion stress, it is a really unpleasant place to be," she said.

"They should have somewhere nicer to go where they can engage in activities that put them in a different headspace not a clinically focused and overwhelming environment that is the ED."

Associate Professor Banfield said she firmly believed people who have experienced mental health problems should play a key role in research.

She actually got her start in the mental health research space after seeing a job advertisement which called for people who had experience with mental health issues.

"Unless you actually have people who have experienced mental health problems, have experienced our mental health system, have experienced what it is to want to take your own life, it's actually difficult to understand what those gaps are and what you need from services," Associate Professor Banfield said.

"They need these services run by peers and come from that position of walking beside you not trying to fix you."

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The Belconnen Safe Haven, located at the Belconnen Community Health Centre, will be a 12-month pilot and it will run from 4.30pm to 9pm every Tuesday to Saturday.

"Our experience is that is when the peak demand for services is going to occur, that's based on data from the PACER service, emergency clinicians, talking to people with lived experience [and] community organisations," Ms Davidson said.

"The important thing though is this a pilot so what we're looking to do is look at how things are working in practice."

The northside location was chosen because there were more call-outs for the Police, Ambulance, Clinician Emergency Response Program - known as PACER - service in the Belconnen region.

There are plans for a second Safe Haven in Canberra's south.

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