Through the Head to Health (now Medicare Mental Health) centres, we are starting to understand the true value and impact of multidisciplinary team care, where the peer worker voice holds sway alongside the clinical voice. We are seeing ED reductions, managed and reduced clinical wait times, better collaboration and better consumer experiences. Yes, these service types can be expensive and may not solve for rural complexities, but surely we are working hard to understand the strengths of these models and applying lessons learned on a national scale? We need to be brave, we need to stand up and say STOP, COLLABORATE and LISTEN! Let's prioritise mental health as a critical issue and address it as a nation. Many large health initiatives have political elements enshrined into their fabric. In that case, let's urge our politicians to commit to understanding how international models are showing signs of success. Let's cross the floor, unite our parties and agree on a way forward.

More people need to be empowered and supported to speak up about their experiences within our mental health systems. Raising awareness is as simple as giving feedback or making a complaint about issues faced while accessing our mental health systems. Too many people are falling through the cracks and worse due to the poor standards of our mental health systems and the top mental health executives claim they have 10 years to fix these problems thanks to the royal commission! That attitude (excuse!) is appalling and we are literally loosing lives everyday because of it. Most people with mental health problems are very vulnerable and cannot speak up for themselves during a crisis with all that's going on in their lives. We need more mental health advocates that can reach these vulnerable people and get them the support, dignity and respect they deserve. We literally need an entire army of advocates that can be the voice for our mental health consumers in there times of need. To also share information, support services and ways to cope in a crisis, to understand their rights and obligations within our mental health systems too. Knowledge is key. We need more people standing up for the rights of mental health consumers, and zero stigma attached to the struggles of mental health. The government mental health executives need to be held accountable for their negligence in implementing mental health systems that are directly to blame for the mental health crisis our country is facing today. Take a stand, raise your voice, advocate for mental health today!

Start early. Teach young people in schools about emotional regulation, DBT skills. Identify 'at risk' kids and give them specialised attention. Understand trauma, neglect, abuse and how it manifests as mental health and behavioural challenges. Regulate social media - remove porn. Understand metabolic theory and the complex relationship between physical and mental health (see metabolicmind.org). Bring back asylums - in a new, transformed way, as lifestyle + therapy + psychoeducation recovery centre facilities.... take the burden off families and carers. Introduce successful modalities such as Voice Dialogue. Increase social activities/groups for young people in particular, especially those suffering mental ill health. Help people embrace their neurodivergence and discover their own, unique personalities in a mad, crazy world... that it's normal to feel stressed in loud, crowded shopping malls!

Finding a psychologist/psychiatrist to suit an individual can seem like winning the lottery. When the odds feel like they are stacked against the individual - and after trying one or two professionals who don't fit - a patient in pyschological distress can easily give up trying; especially if there is a shortfall of professionals practising. For people living in rural/remote areas, the issue is magnified siginificantly. Speaking personally, I persevered. It took me 25 years to find someone who helped me in a meaningful way. I dearly wish I found someone like him decades ago. I never knew imagined that my brain had the capacity to think 'differently'; that it could be retrained to do so. So many people don't have this opportunity. There has to be a better way for patients to find effective clinicians. People in the rural/regional communities shouldn't have to rely on stoicism to live.

I recently watched a video where a therapist clarifies that: “A ‘first day of therapist school thing’ we learn is that we’re not supposed to give our patients advice... we’re not your friend.” It is staggering how many people still don’t know that therapists work under this rule - which also forbids them from providing any actual help with their patients’ problems.

I spent 8 useless years in therapy without having this ever clarified to me, at a cost of thousands of dollars down the drain. My life is still a mess, and I still need help!

We need to acknowledge that this rule creates a massive shortfall between the help that suffering Australians need, and the service that the mental health system is willing to offer. Then we need to correct it. So that means that either Australian therapists will need to formally renounce their allegiance to this rule, or we need to create a new type of therapy profession where the therapists WILL give their patients the essential advice and/or assistance they need to solve their problems.

We need the general public and media to be keenly aware of this shortfall between the help that patients need, and the service that therapists are willing to offer; and we need our politicians to commit to bridging this shortfall as a #1 priority of their mental health policy.

We also need the language around mental healthcare to be mandatorily changed to layman’s terms, so that everyone can know precisely what each and every type of therapist and clinic does (and what they don’t do); and precisely where to go for the help they need. Terms like “Primary Health Network”, “Psychosocial”, “Missing Middle”, “Occupational Therapy”, “Community Care”, ect., ect. (just to name a few!) need to be quickly abolished and replaced with ordinary layman’s terms that tell you exactly what these people do, so you know where you need to go! I’ve been reading these terms for years, and I still have no idea what they really mean.

Making the language straightforward will also make it easier for everybody to spot where there are gaps in the system - the sorts of problems that have no designated profession in the system to handle them.

“How do we tackle the root causes of mental ill-health, and take a proactive approach to mental wellbeing?”

1. We need a system to remedy loneliness - a system that sets lonely people up with compatable, thoughtfully-matched companions and coworkers - including, but not limited to, romantic partners/spouses.
2. We need the government to create more jobs for the long-term unemployed, impoverished, and homeless. I repeat: for the long-term unemployed, impoverished, and homeless! Not for imported foreign workers! We need the government to create well-paying jobs, and to pledge that these jobs will be assigned to the Australians who have been waiting for work the longest.

At the same time, these jobs must not be assigned willy-nilly, but with due regard for the recipient’s mental wellbeing and personal aspirations.
3. We need to really tone-down the ruling class’s obsession with education, and make it much easier for people to get great employment with minimal education, and to access servicepeople who don’t belong to the college-graduate set.

We are so proud of ourselves for largely overcoming our primative racisms and gender biases, but at the same time, we’ve created a country where uneducated people are mostly treated like 2nd-class citizens: significantly forbidden from achieving our dreams, from being contributing members of society, from shaping our society, and even from consentually assisting one another in any manner that has been deemed the sole privelage of educated people.

How can anyone be mentally well in a country where they, and their kind, are regarded and treated as “lesser” people?
4. The issue of homelessness is receiving a lot of due attention right now. But there is still woeful disregard for the fact that while a house may be composed of bricks and morter, a home is made out of people and love.

So many of us aren’t hoping for a cold, steel roof over our head, we are hoping for a family.

I grew up in the age of “Friends” (i.e. Ross, Rachel, Joey, et al.) I grew up presuming that, when I reached my 20s, I would undoubtedly get invited to move in to a house/apartment with a group of wacky characters who would become the brothers and sisters I never had. And then, I reached my 20s... and it didn’t happen. I ended up sad, alone, suicidal, but with that oh-so-important roof over my head.

The government is doing its darndest to build plenty of new boxes to deliver it’s boxless citizens into. But for people like me, that isn’t enough. I don’t need a big empty box, I need a home! I need a family! I need the government to send me off to live in a new box that comes with a family to share my life with!

We need to weave this need into our strategy for homelessness. We need to be setting well-matched, compatable strangers up to live together in the same houses/apartments. Not only will this help the housing shortage - by storing multiple citizens comfortably in the same box, but much more importantly, it will remedy the loneliness of those of us who need a family far more then we’ll ever need shelter.

- I think having free public mental health clinics that are government funded would be a big help. They are bulk billed. Similar to the urgent medical health clinics that are available now. - Also have free wellness centres where people of all ages can meditate, do yoga and just relax. - Prevention is the key to mental health. Tackle problems before they become bigger. - To take a proactive approach to mental wellbeing means looking after your mental health; eating a good diet, exercising and meditating. - In making Australia a mentally healthy place encourage people to seek mental help if needed, have a food diet, exercise and meditate.

Clinical staff are no less important than the Union-represented train drivers, etc, that the Governments (State & Federal) pander to. And a message to the clinical staff - treat each other with decency & respect (particularly Consultants to JMOs) so the young Doctors don’t leave (alive or unfortunately too frequently dead) …

I believe better mental health outcomes can be achieved if early intervention occurs. A barrier to mental health is financial and socioeconomic. Mental health should be provided at primary school, early care should prevent socialisation and stigma. Although it’s getting better, mental health still carry’s stigma and fear. People particularly males are less inclined to talk about problems. Yet we know that early expression is helpful. The poet William Blake in his A Poisoned Tree wrote, “ I was angry with my foe, I told it not, my wrath did grow; I was angry with my friend, I told it so, my wrath did end.” That applies with anything, sharing it or talking about it expresses and releases it. If addressed young, coping mechanisms and strategies can be learned. Teenage years are often fraught, study, exams, parental expectations and peer pressures. Teenage suicide rates are too high. There will always be a need for therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, but early intervention will ameliorate this.

No point in spending money on treatments if workplaces are not designed to keep us healthy! Too many people stressed out, over loaded, bullied and more!