Mental health services in Australia
Canada is 1.5 times the size of Australia. Australia’s population of 20 million is located principally on the east coast. Like Canada, the Australia has a federal system of Government with 5 States and two territories. Each State and territory has its own legislation on mental health. The federal (Commonwealth) Government is responsible for health care planning. In addition, the federal Government subsidizes an insurance program (Medicare) that covers visits to specialists and family physicians, while provincial governments are involved in the provision of hospital care and community mental health services. The Commonwealth government also subsidises the cost of medication through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. These funds are supplemented by private health insurance. Mental health costs account for 6.5 per cent of all health care costs. Primary care treats the majority of common psychological disorders such as anxiety or depression, while specialist mental health services concentrate on those with severe mental illness. There have been 4 national mental health plans since 1992 with the long term aims of promoting mental health, increasing the quality and responsiveness of services, and creating a consistent approach to mental health service system reform among Australian states and territories. These systematic cycles of planning have first allowed a shift from psychiatric hospitals to community services, from reliance on psychiatric hospitals as pivotal to psychiatric care system. Community care budgets have increased, but overall have decreased with money not following patients; but recent deployment of federally funded through Medicare access to psychotherapy by psychologists for common mental disorders in primary care have increased overall budget. Concerns remain that shift to youth first onset psychosis clinics may come from older long-term psychotic patients, a form of discrimination whilst evidence amount of excess mortality by cardio-vascular diseases and cancers, and due to poverty, poor health prevention and primary health care for these patients. From a system perspective, Australia has been inspired by Canada and created in 2012 its own mental health commission with a similar leading role for patients and families, aboriginal people representatives, but also a surveillance of the system with its own yearly report, like the Quebec Health Commissioner 2012 mental health system performance report.