Date: 18/01/2012
Reporter: Adam Cresswell
Source: The Australian, p 5
Synopsis: Mental health experts have delivered a mixed assessment of the federal government’s new 10-year-plan for mental health services, which suggestions it contains too few specific goals and targets to be useful. The document, released for public comment yesterday, sets out overarching objectives, such as a greater emphasis on early detection and treatment, and increased support for mental health patients to participate in society.
However, it avoids setting specific targets to be reached by a given date, or suggesting how its outcomes should be achieved. Mental Health Council of Australia chief executive Frank Quinlan said the body was committed to the idea of a roadmap, but that identifiable and clear targets were needed.
John Mendoza, who quit as chairman of the federal government’s National Advisory Council on Mental Health in 2010 in protest at what he considered the neglect of mental health policy, said there had been numerous strategies over the past 20 years – all of which were “unable to address the mental health needs of generations of Australians”.
A spokeswoman for Mental Health and Ageing Minister Mark Butler said the draft roadmap had been in development for six months, and that “building a world-class mental health system takes time, sustained focus and sustained investment, which is why the roadmap is so important – it outlines what we intend to do over the long term and how we’ll get there.”
