Last month the government released its National Mental Health Workforce Strategy, which has been designed as a ten-year roadmap towards building a sustainable, distributed, skilled and supported mental health workforce.
The strategy calls for a "whole of government and a whole of community" effort to not only attract and retain fresh talent into the industry, but to also bolster existing mental health support offered to all Australians.
APS CEO Dr Zena Burgess shares her thoughts so we can learn more about the strategy and understand where more work needs to be done.
What does the government’s strategy entail?
We always welcome any government focus on improving conditions and support for mental health professionals. I was happy to see that many focal points in this strategy align with some of the important advocacy work that the APS has been doing over the past few years.
For example, the government’s strategy acknowledges several challenges facing the mental health workforce in Australia, including:
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Workforce shortages across different occupations and disciplines
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Stigmatisation and negative perceptions related to mental health professions
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Unclear scopes of practice, particularly in multidisciplinary teams
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Limited collaboration across mental health professions
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Workforce distribution disparities, especially in regional areas
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Limited availability of high-quality data for workforce planning
These are all incredibly important things for us to focus on and get right. Australia’s ability to bounce back from adversity – which we can expect more of in the near future – will be dependent on this.
I was also pleased to see climate-related anxieties addressed in the strategy.
APS sees this as a key challenge, for both our communities and the stretched and exhausted mental health workforce that supports them. A quarter of Australians meet the criteria for clinical anxiety or trauma related to climate change, research finds. And while this is experienced across all generations, it is particularly pronounced in younger people.
What are the goals of the government’s strategy?
The government has prioritised its efforts into five areas:
- Attract a skilled mental health workforce
- Train and educate mental health professionals
- Maximise the potential of the existing workforce
- Provide comprehensive support to mental health workers
- Retain a motivated and coordinated mental health workforce
These are all goals APS can get behind. However, success will be dependent on a combination of immediate and long-term action.
If the government hopes to attract a skilled mental health workforce, APS believes this can be achieved by bringing university funding for psychology in line with medicine, dentistry and veterinary studies.
To facilitate better access to mental health services for those living in rural areas of Australia, we're advocating for relocation incentives offered to psychologists, which is a model that has worked well for GPs.
We also want the government to ease the financial burden on regional and rural psychologists by removing HECS-HELP debt and introducing higher Medicare rebates for those working in these high-demand regions.
As an immediate step, there's important infrastructure work to be done to enhance internet access for those in regional/rural areas who want to access support via telehealth. Access to mental health services when you need it most should be a basic human right.
What is the APS position on this strategy?
This is incredibly important work for our nation and APS is committed to doing its part to inform and support these government efforts.
However, the success of this strategy hinges upon continued commitment and full funding. Currently, we're seeing that only 35% of the government's psychology workforce targets are met. We desperately need to attract more skilled experts into this industry to support the mental health needs for all Australians.
We also need to alleviate pressures on the existing psychology sector. Our research tells us one in three psychologists have closed their books, compared to 1 in 100 pre-pandemic. The world is fast becoming more complex and challenging, due to social, geopolitical and environmental factors, so we'll need to prepare for that from a wellbeing perspective.
In short, this strategy is a great starting point, but it can't be where we stop.
Where do you think the government should start?
I think the access issue should be our main priority right now.
We need the government to make accessing mental health services easier and more affordable. APS is aware clients are waiting to get an appointment and we know mental health issues become more serious if not treated so we are keen to support all measures that encourage early intervention.
Next month marks one year since the Medicare-subsidised psychology sessions were slashed from 20 to 10 sessions. We are still deeply concerned about this, as are many of our members. Now more than ever we need a robust, skilled and energised psychology industry and these cuts go against that very goal particularly for those people with severe and complex mental health conditions.
How does APS plan to continue pushing for change in 2024?
The APS has worked relentlessly to make sure the issues affecting our profession are understood and addressed by government.
In recent years, we have been strongly focused on the psychology workforce, designing evidence-based solutions for workforce shortages and engaging proactively and constructively with the Federal Government to consolidate its understanding of these issues.
As announced in the 2023-24 Federal Budget, $91.3 million in additional funding over five years is expected to boost psychology numbers through the addition of 500 psychology postgraduate placements, 500 one-year internships, 2000 supervisor training sessions (1000 of which will be refresher places), and a redesign of psychology higher education pathways.
We look forward to working with the government to deliver the internships and supervisor training sessions to the highest quality, galvanising our incredible 27,000+ members and our strong government and sector relationships to ensure these initiatives are delivered to the highest standard.
We will continue our frank and open discussions and will work with the government on implementing these financial commitments and, as always, will continue to communicate with them on what’s needed to bring the benefits of psychology to our communities.
These changes don't happen overnight, and APS is supportive of the fact that the government has set this out as a ten-year plan to keep efforts focussed and realistic. However, it's important that we don't think of the information outlined in this report as a 'future problem' – we can't kick the can down the road. A resilient, prosperous and productive community of tomorrow calls for action today.