WHS Regional Meeting 2024 - Mental health and well being reform: Perspectives on the need for change

As we have seen through media and social media reporting all too often, the default position on mental ill health is to tag people as “mad, bad and dangerous” (to misquote the description of Lord Byron). The assumption is that the experience of mental ill health is something dangerous and external to our normal lives.

Despite the reality that 43% of Australians will experience mental ill health across the course of their lives and that over 240,000 of us care for people managing mental ill health, it is still the poor cousin in the health system. This is a problem shared globally.

So what does it take to get the idea of “Nothing about us without us” heard in all levels of mental health care? Indeed, all levels of health and social care?

The Lancet Global Mental Health Commission said: ‘it remains a grim reality that the vast majority of people affected by mental health problems globally still do not receive adequate care. The burden of these problems in terms of their direct health consequences, is very large and increasing, but their impacts on social and economic well-being, on family functioning, and on diverse sectors of society is colossal and almost incalculable.”

In response to growing demand and worsening outcomes the consumer, carer and wider lived experience movement has gained momentum. Nowhere perhaps more so than in Australia. Yet the prospects of reform have barely been scratched. Entrenched cultural and industry opposition is real. Progress is slow.

This panel of leading lived and living experience practitioners from a wide range will share their diverse experiences and hopes for system change and improved outcomes. Collaborative and respectful engagement on ways to improve the path to reform will be the focus of the session. With implications well beyond mental health care, the lessons and opportunities from lived experience at the heart of change are big and bold.