Our Challenge

The new mental health system for Australia outlined in Time for Service is designed to help people get well and stay well and reduce demand on acute hospital services. It focuses on early intervention and ensuring that people experiencing their first episode of illness receive high quality, targeted care. This is to avoid the development of chronic mental illness and reduce the burden of disease on the community into the future.

The need for fundamental and coordinated reform of the mental health system is clear. Simple, piecemeal investments in existing systems and services will not end the crisis in mental health and will offer services that are poorly integrated and fail to deliver quality care. There are already big gaps and new services are urgently required to meet increasing demands.

Australia urgently needs systemic changes to its mental health system and these require new ways of thinking and funding.

Reform of mental health services cannot be achieved through a quick fix – it will require a sustained contribution…from both the Commonwealth and the States and Territories to ensure long term fundamental improvements in services for the mentally ill. Together, our investment in mental health will support reform of the system and ensure that it remains sustainable into the future.

John Howard, 5 April 2006

It is Time for Service