How can Australia’s mental health system become more like an invisible village which wraps around the person rather than the jigsaw system we have currently?

The Invisible Village was conceptualized by Chris Beels (Columbia University, USA) in 1989, to describe an unobtrusive supportive community that can readily “accommodate madness” and which can vastly improve the quality of life of people with mental illness while living in the community. It was hypothesised that better outcomes could be ascribed to lack of stigma or ostracising, continued inclusion in an extended kinship network in village society (Rosen A, 2020), and how everyone can serve a valued role in a small-scale communal society of familiar and connected relationships.

Australia’s mental health system has become more and more complex since the first National Mental Health Policy and Strategy in the early 1990’s. But has it improved? The answer is “Yes, BUT....”

Today we have a multitude of services, programs and communities that offer clinical, social and support care to people with mental ill-health. There are difficulties in providing integrated mental health services (i.e. services that talk to each other) for many reasons, including differing funding methodologies, workforce shortages and maldistribution, policies and strategies that may or may not be based on evidence and silo-system thinking.

Panel members brief presentations will address some of the problems but will go beyond this to look at some examples of where the system is working to the benefit of its population. Speakers’ topics will focus on: how developing and sustaining the workforce and how funding methodologies can eliminate dis-continuities of care and enhance Mental Health Services ability to work together. This includes primary, secondary and tertiary health care, public, private & NGO sectors; integration of lived/living experience and families into the healthcare system; access, when and where needed, to mental health care, especially for those with serious mental illness/disorder.
The speakers’ brief talks will be followed by audience discussion and questions.
Roger Gurr: The need for change is clear, but funding is very poorly targeted - join us to collaborate on solutions!
Paul Fung: How do we create an integrated and connected primary care system that delivers better mental health and wellbeing for all.
Alan Rosen: The Road from the Bondi Junction killings (a Disaster of Discontinuities of Care) to building Invisible Villages, and how to resource them.
Michelle Banfield: What do we want from the mental health system?