In 2020 the Productivity Commission identified over 150,000 people without access to psychosocial supports and 900,000 mental health carers with no access to community supports.
Psychosocial supports are community supports which help people with mental health challenges:
- Connect with the clinical care and other services they need
- Build their capacity in managing day-to-day activities
- Strengthen social skills, friendships and relationships with their family
In 2022, the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement was ratified by Commonwealth, State and Territory Health Ministers (the Parties). It designated that psychosocial supports a shared responsibility and called on the Parties to respond to the unmet need by working out the current gap, and attaching a schedule of actions once the gap was quantified.
In response, the Ministers scheduled in biannual ministerial meetings to progress this and other responsibilities under the Agreement. One of the first tasks was to quantify the unmet need.
In August 2024 the Analysis of unmet need for psychosocial supports outside of the National Disability Insurance Scheme was released. It found 230,500 people with high need mental health challenges have no access to psychosocial supports.
