services

More acute mental health beds and more doctors is not the answer to Australia’s mental health needs – it is more community-based beds which will improve mental health outcomes, according to David Crosbie, CEO of the Mental Health Council of Australia. “We have a desperate shortage of community-based residential treatment options for people with a mental illness“, Mr Crosbie said.

Up to 80 per cent of inmates in Australian prisons have a mental illness and magistrates in regional areas are sending mentally ill people to jail as there is often no treatment or mental health facilities available.