Experts from RMIT available for comment about Victoria's mental health royal commission final report

Dr Chris Maylea (0439 463 255 or chris.maylea@rmit.edu.au)

Topics: mental health, mental health law, mental health policy and practice, advocacy, human rights, coercion in mental health

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix our mental health system. It requires a completely different approach and anything less than a complete overhaul will mean the royal commission has failed.

“The only way to fix our mental health system is to put people who have used it in charge of it. Having ‘experts’ and clinicians in charge has led us to where we are now. Real change will only come with genuine consumer leadership at all levels.

“Our mental health system is failing. The government knows this and the royal commission knows this. If the royal commission recommends more of the same, more funding to the same services, we will just have more of the same broken system.

“Our mental health system, and wider supports for people that use it, is discriminatory and regularly violates people’s human rights, treating them like second class citizens. This report is our one chance at fixing that today and into the future.

“People who use mental health services die 20 to 30 years younger than the rest of the population, mostly from preventable diseases. We need to change almost everything about the supports we provide so we can fix this today.

“As our research shows, many people are harmed by the system that is supposed to support them. In the future, nobody should be harmed by our mental health system.

“Half of the people in mental health hospitals are forced to be there. We need better services, so people choose to use the services they want and need when they need them.”

Dr Chris Maylea is Senior Lecturer with RMIT’s Global and Social Studies Centre. He is a mental health lawyer, mental health social worker and has managed mental health services. He is Deputy Chair of the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council and consults to government on mental health policy.

Stan Winford (0438 080 608 or kristann.winford@rmit.edu.au)

Topics: youth justice, specialist courts, victims of crime, access to justice and legal aid, prisons, punishment, sentencing, policing, mental health, disability and the law, drugs and the law.

"The royal commission presents an opportunity for us to become the kind of community that doesn’t treat mental health issues as a criminal justice problem. 

“The royal commission’s recommendations must drive a reduction in the overrepresentation of people with mental health issues in our justice system. Our prisons cannot continue to be our largest psychiatric treatment facilities.

"Our prison population has been growing rapidly and our prisons are full of people with complex needs. Many of them are there because they have not received the support that they needed, when they needed it, while in the community. 

"It's absolutely critical that disability and mental health needs are recognised and responded to in the community when people seek support.

“Prisons and police cells currently function as stop gap health services – yet they are the last place people who need support should be.

"Of course, people already in the justice system experiencing mental health issues need access to timely treatment and support. This should be delivered in alternative settings, including forensic mental health facilities, rather than prisons, and in the community through greater access to diversion, specialist therapeutic courts and community-based sentencing options.

"The justice system should never again function as a warehouse for people with mental health support needs. We need a properly-funded, recovery-focused and fair mental health system."

Stan Winford is the Associate Director at RMIT’s Centre for Innovative Justice. He is a legal and justice system expert with experience in innovation and reform including therapeutic justice. He is a practising lawyer who has held senior roles in government and community legal services and was formerly chair of the Mental Health Legal Centre.

Dr Kathryn Daley (0412 168 361 or Kathryn.Daley@rmit.edu.au)

Topics: youth mental health, mental health royal commission, substance abuse, criminal justice system, young people

“The mental health royal commission has been much-needed. However, despite widespread agreement that ‘the system’ needs reform, there is much less agreement on how it ought to be improved.

“Increased funding is essential but diversifying what counts as treatment is critical and that requires the inclusion of a broader diversity of voices. It is inadequate to base an entire system on a psychiatric model that is clearly inadequate and often harmful for many groups of people.

“Young people are in the system and, therefore, have a right to contribute to the types of services they need and for this to be taken seriously. 

“The absence of flexible, well-resourced and suitable mental health services has seen prisons, housing services and emergency departments become mental health triage points, which is crisis-based and wildly unjust. If you are extremely unwell, but not offending, you can remain invisible to services for much of your life.

“Young people with complex issues struggle to navigate the mental health system. While there are entry points to ‘upstream’ services such as Headspace, there are few services available to young people the Headspace model doesn't suit.  

“Inevitably we see these young people in the Magistrates’ Court, their lives permanently annd unnecessarily stained with a criminal record, which would not have been the case had good youth work and suitable, flexible mental health supports been provided.”

Dr Kathryn Daley is the manager of the Bachelor of Youth Work and Youth Studies at RMIT University. Her research is focused on disadvantaged youth, substance abuse, mental health, self-injury and social policy. 

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