Mental health expert calls for reforms as well as more funding

A review of the $9bn mental health funding system should not be used as an excuse for more money without reform, an expert says.

Former National Mental Health commissioner Professor Ian Hickie. Picture: Richard Dobson

A review of the $9 billion mental health funding system should cover mounting concerns about the role of the National Disability Insurance Scheme in scrambling an already broken system and not be used as an excuse for more money without reform, a top expert says.

Josh Frydenberg and Health Minister Greg Hunt yesterday announced the Productivity Commission would investigate the issue which will, for the first time at an economic level, explore the cost of poor mental health on incomes, living standards, physical wellbeing and social connectedness.

Former National Mental Health commissioner Ian Hickie, who is also co-director of health and policy at the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre, told The Australian any government that thinks it can fix the problem with more money alone would be “making a big mistake”.

“If you get the delivery wrong, it doesn’t matter how much money you put in upfront, you will fail,” Professor Hickie said.

“And if Labor thinks they are just going to pour more money into Medicare, they are wrong.

“We do need more investment, many hundreds of millions of dollars, but the system we have now is inferior because it funds based on activity, not outcomes.”

Professor Hickie said the introduction of the $22bn NDIS was followed by “stupid decisions” that allowed state governments to pull their own community mental health funding, complicating an already woeful system.

“They (bureaucrats) are all at sea over mental illness in the NDIS,” he said. “You’ve got 64,000 people originally targeted by the NDIS but in truth there are 250,000 people who overlap with it and who would require some form of individual funded support.”

Writing in The Australian today, former prime minister Julia Gillard — who is also the chair of mental health charity ­BeyondBlue — says much of the effort for ­reform must start with young ­people.

“We already know that half of all adult mental health conditions emerge by the age of 14. If left untreated, these illnesses can dramatically reduce a young person’s chances of leading a happy, healthy, productive life,” Ms Gillard writes.

“Tragically, suicide accounted for over one-third of deaths among people aged 15-24 in Australia in 2017. Now new research from the mental health organisation, headspace, shows that psychological distress experienced by 12 to 25-year-olds has increased threefold in a decade.”

Professor Hickie said political parties needed to start a serious discussion about mental health reform — not just funding commitments — ahead of the next election.

“The gap between the government press release and reality is enormous,” he said.