Ten Year Roadmap for National Mental Health Reform Draft

The Commonwealth Government recently released its draft Ten Year Roadmap for National Mental Health Reform. The Roadmap, which has been released as the fourth draft for public feedback, lays out the framework and strategy for current and future governments in relation to national mental health reform. While we believe there is still much work needing to be done on the Roadmap to clarify effective actions and outcomes, we believe it is a good start and it’s encouraging to see a continued focus from the Government on mental health, specifically with the acknowledgement of the role workplaces need to play.

As much of SuperFriend’s work is focused on promoting mentally healthy workplace practices, with highlighters in hand we went through the roadmap to look at the strategies and directions that are particularly relevant to workplaces.

“Workplaces need to become more involved in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of their employees by providing a respectful work environment, and flexible workplaces that enable people to remain at work during periods of mental illness.”
Source: Ten Year Roadmap for National Mental Health Reform Draft #4, Page 5.

Key Directions in the Ten Year Roadmap

Key Direction 1: Promoting Good Mental Health and Wellbeing and Preventing Mental Illness and Suicide

The Roadmap acknowledges that developing environments that foster good mental health are key protective factors against known risk factors for mental illness. It also highlights the need to reduce stigma and discrimination by increasing community understanding of mental health. As workplaces are an environment where most people spend a significant amount of time, the Roadmap highlights the need for workplace specific mental health promotion, retention and suicide prevention policies and programs. It’s encouraging to see the Government acknowledging the importance of this as SuperFriend is entering the development and pilot phase for a suite of seven workplace mental health and wellbeing programs. These SuperFriend programs are largely aimed at prevention by developing the capacity of workplaces to improve their mental health and wellbeing practices for the benefit of their employees and their workplace.

Key Direction 2: Early Detection and Intervention

Early detection of mental illness and intervention activities are of key importance as they can “reduce the severity, duration and recurrence of mental illness and associated social disadvantage”. From the perspective of workplaces, the Roadmap highlights the need to “build better connections between mental health and health services... education and training providers [and] employers”. Sound familiar? It should. This is what SuperFriend is all about.

Key Direction 3: Consumers and Carers at the Heart of Services and Support

The Ten Year Roadmap aims to take a “person-centred” approach, meaning consumers, families and carers will have greater opportunity to take a lead in determining and making choices about treatment and support. Having the personal ability to influence these choices - as well as how to maintain their relationships, education and work - is likely help in their recovery. This is likely to have positive implications for workplaces that develop return to work plans with employees affected by mental illness. It is encouraging to see the “person-centred” focus by the Government, coupled with the inclusion of their key support people (including employers if appropriate) in the overall intervention to support recovery.

Key Direction 4: Supporting People to Participate in Society

It’s very encouraging to see an increased focus on social and economic inclusion for people with mental illness. Feeling connected to others is an important aid in recovery. Similarly, it’s also good to see the recognition of how important social inclusion and participation in the workforce can be for prevention of mental illness.

“Paid work can act as a protective factor against the severity of mental illness. Paid work promotes social inclusion, lowers the risk of poverty and homelessness and can contribute to the recovery of some conditions.” Source: Ten Year Roadmap for National Mental Health Reform Draft #4, Page 25.

We’re quite excited by longer term actions listed by the Roadmap in regards to workforce participation. SuperFriend is focused on workplace mental health and we see great synergy between these action points and our own work.

Longer term actions:
13. Increase the number of consumer who can find and stay in work by:

• Making employment part of the mental health recovery process;
• targeting stigma reduction activities in workplaces;
• increasing awareness, understanding and acceptance among employers and co‐workers;
• promoting mental health and wellbeing in the work place;
• increasing work retention;
• increasing the skills of people with mental illness who are seeking work;
• providing the right incentives and support for employers and consumers seeking work; and
• increasing the effectiveness of programs providing supported and staged return to work.

Source: Ten Year Roadmap for National Mental Health Reform Draft #4, Page 26.

Key Direction 5: Making Services Work for People – Access, Quality, Integration and Coordination

Key Direction 5 is focused on “improving the quality, accessibility, coordination and integration of services and support for people experiencing mental health problems.” It addresses the need for a strengthened and unified approach from governments to improve services. What we found interesting was the action plan to develop “robust and standardised data collection to enable the formulation of evidence based policy and program decisions.” SuperFriend has recently embarked on a research project called SuperMIND, an initiative to collect, analyse and understand superannuation claims relating to mental illness and suicide. The SuperMIND project aims to influence and affect industry changes in the way member and claims data is collected, maintained and reported, leading to the informing future targeted mental health and wellbeing programs.

Your Opportunity to Provide Feedback

The Roadmap has been released as a draft to allow the public to read it and provide feedback. We strongly encourage you to download the draft Ten Year Roadmap for National Mental Health Reform. If you would like to provide feedback you can complete the official online survey that is available until February 1, 2012. SuperFriend will be providing a formal submission of feedback.