Government commitments to expanding access to mental health services for young people are positive in direction, but very limited in scale. Even when the Government expresses full confidence in evidence based models like headspace (for mild to moderate mental ill-health) and EPPIC (for psychosis), the funding is inexplicably meagre. The investment will shave a mere 3% from the waiting list of 750,000 young Australians currently locked out of the mental health care they and their families desperately need. Australians expect the Government to remedy this in the coming months.
At a time of unprecedented new health investments, the Government has yet to explain why it is pumping all its precious fuel into acute health while mental health is left to run on fumes. Mental health services are expected to address 14% of Australia’s health burden with a meagre 6% of our health expenditure, well below comparable developed nations. Yet, rather than address this problem, the Government has widened the gap. This trend must be reversed. With political will, Australia can still meet the target of 9-12% of the health budget that was recommended by the 2006 Senate Select Committee on Mental Health.
Unless we see a change of heart, confidence in this government’s ability to adequately address mental ill-health across Australia will continue to drain away Yet there is still time for the Australian Government to show the leadership it has promised on mental health.
The mental health sector overwhelmingly wants the Government to use the coming weeks to outline its guiding vision for mental health reform, commit itself to ending the unequal access to quality care between physical and mental health and make good faith funding commitments towards achieving this vision. There would be universal community and professional support for this kind of leadership. The millions of Australian families struggling with mental ill-health without access to care desperately need to see that kind of action soon.
