Given the complexities of managing people living with chronic severe mental health conditions, Governments must work in partnership with mental health stakeholders and communities in building a better mental health and suicide prevention system for all rural and remote Australians.
In this submission, the Alliance proposes a number of changes to the next National Agreement to improve the mental health and suicide prevention systems.
Addressing social determinants of health in mental health and suicide prevention systems: Preventive strategies addressing social determinants of mental health and wellbeing should sit alongside existing evidence‐based strategies in clinical psychiatry.
Improving access to mental health care and psychosocial supports: Reorientation of the mental health and wellbeing and suicide prevention system towards prevention and early intervention is essential. There is also an urgent need to ensure equitable and appropriate levels of funding for and access to mental health promotion, preventive mental health, and early intervention programs and services for people living in rural communities.
Strengthening workforce availability and capacity: The Alliance supports strategies to ensure equitable access to GPs as an essential source of primary mental health care in rural areas, as well as removing barriers to recruitment and retention of mental health professionals.
Addressing the fragmentation in mental health care: The review should consider better coordination between state-funded and federally funded services, to ensure smoother transitions between primary care, specialist care, and crisis response. Primary care should be integrated with mental health, aged care, community and disability services.
Addressing other barriers to access and emerging issues: Encouraging and promoting help-seeking behaviour should be complemented with increased availability of mental health support for people who may not otherwise seek the help they need. Interventions to address emerging mental health issues such as impacts of climate, cost of living pressures and economic or global market downturn on mental health must be grounded in, and be responsive, to local context.
Improving data and performance information for assessing progress against the Agreement: The Alliance strongly urges data collected on mental health to be aggregated based on the priority population groups, and in the case of people living in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia, broken down by geographic location.
The full submission can be downloaded below.