Our Services
Counselling Services for Women in Mount Barker
Seven areas of focused, trauma-informed private counselling. You can contact Safe Refuge directly without a GP referral or Mental Health Treatment Plan.
Finding Your Starting Point
You Do Not Need to Fit Into One Neat Category
You may know exactly what you want help with, or you may only know that life no longer feels manageable. Both are valid places to begin. Counselling does not require you to arrive with a diagnosis or the right words. The service descriptions below are a guide to the kinds of conversations we often have, not boxes you have to fit into.
Women frequently come with concerns that overlap. Anxiety may have grown after a difficult birth. Grief may sit alongside a change in faith, identity, or family relationships. An old experience of trauma may become harder to carry during pregnancy or motherhood. We can start with what feels most pressing and make sense of the connections together.
Safe Refuge offers individual counselling in Mount Barker for women from across the Adelaide Hills. If travel, distance, health, work, or caring responsibilities make an in-person appointment difficult, you can also explore online counselling from a private space at home.
01
Trauma Counselling
Paced, gentle support for women affected by abuse, family violence, childhood experiences, or complex trauma. Sessions begin with safety, choice, and a pace that feels manageable.
Learn more →02
Perinatal Mental Health
Support for the enormous identity shift of motherhood, postnatal anxiety and depression, birth trauma, pregnancy loss, and the particular loneliness of early motherhood in a small town.
Learn more →03
Birth Trauma Counselling
Gentle, paced support to process a birth that left you shaken, frightened, or grieving — whether it was last month or years ago. Tell the story at your own speed; you stay in control.
Learn more →04
Grief & Loss
A steady companion through bereavement, miscarriage, stillbirth, and the quiet griefs no one around you recognises. Grief does not need to be cured. It needs to be witnessed.
Learn more →05
Anxiety & Depression
Practical counselling support for women living with persistent worry, low mood, or exhaustion, with space to understand patterns and consider useful coping strategies.
Learn more →06
Christian Counselling
Counselling from a practising Catholic for women who want faith taken seriously as part of the conversation. Respectful of other traditions and not a substitute for spiritual direction.
Learn more →07
Women's Counselling
A space that understands the particular pressures of being a woman, a mother, a daughter, and a friend in the Adelaide Hills. For anything that does not fit the neat boxes above.
Learn more →Choosing a Service
Start With What Feels Most Important Today
The right starting point is the one that best describes what is weighing on you now. Your counselling can still make room for the rest of your story.
When the Past Feels Present
Trauma counselling may be the clearest place to begin when memories, fear, shame, or patterns of self-protection keep affecting daily life. Birth trauma counselling offers a more specific starting point when a pregnancy, labour, birth, or postnatal experience remains distressing.
During Change, Loss, or Motherhood
Perinatal counselling can support the emotional changes around pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood. Grief counselling may be a better fit when bereavement, pregnancy loss, a changed relationship, or another significant ending is at the centre of what you are carrying.
For Everyday Life and Meaning
Anxiety and depression counselling offers practical support when worry, low mood, or exhaustion is narrowing your life. Women's counselling provides a broader starting point, while Christian counselling is available when you want faith to be welcomed as part of the conversation.
Before You Book
Clear Information, With No Pressure
It is reasonable to want to understand the practical details before deciding whether counselling feels right for you.
Understand the Cost
See current session prices, block options, concession information, and a straightforward explanation of how private counselling relates to the separate Medicare Better Access program.
View fees →Ask the Practical Questions
Read about referrals, confidentiality, the first session, faith in counselling, online appointments, and what to do if you are unsure which service to choose.
Read common questions →Choose How You Meet
Meet in person in Mount Barker or learn how private online sessions work if you live elsewhere in Australia or prefer to speak from home.
Explore online counselling →Not Sure Where to Start?
We'll Help You Find the Right Fit
A discovery call is a short, free conversation to explore what is troubling you and whether Safe Refuge is the right place for your next step. There is no pressure to book anything further.