NMHCCF Submission to the Productivity Commission on the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement Review

Summary

The National Mental Health Consumer and Carer Forum (NMHCCF) is pleased to provide the following submission to the Productivity Commission (PC) relating to its Review of the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement (NMHSPA).

The NMHCCF is responding to this submission opportunity as Australia’s national combined voice representing lived and living experience of mental ill-health, and the Disability Representative and Carer Organisation (DRCO) for psychosocial disability in Australia. Through this submission, the NMHCCF seeks to ensure that the next iteration of the NMHSPA leads to meaningful improvements in mental health and suicide prevention outcomes. This can be achieved if the Australian Government implements the following two key asks:

1. Lived Experience-designed non-clinical supports in the community and the embedding of Lived Experience at all levels.
2. Community-identified solutions to community-identified problems.

Key themes

This submission reflects the insights gathered from two consultations held by the NMHCCF regarding the effectiveness of the NMHSPA in its current form. These consultations identified significant structural and systemic issues, including poor lived experience involvement, funding inequities, service fragmentation, and the neglect of social determinants of mental health and suicide prevention. Furthermore, there are inadequate community-based supports, workforce challenges, system-led divisions creating care gaps, and not enough funding going towards peer-led emergency department alternatives.

Two Key Asks and Recommendations

1. Lived Experience-Designed Non-Clinical Supports in the Community and the Embedding of Lived Experience at All Levels:
   a. Establish formal mechanisms for lived experience governance at all levels, ensuring direct influence on policy, funding, system and service design, and evaluation.
   b. Implement Lived Experience Oversight Bodies to evaluate program effectiveness and accountability.
   c. Increase funding for community-based and non-clinical mental health initiatives, including peer-led programs and mental health first aid training.
   d. Allow for funding flexibility that is not attached to Commonwealth-prescribed services and outcomes, but the values, principles, and needs identified by Lived Experience at the community level.
   e. Expand access to preventative supports, ensuring community-based services are designed to intervene before individuals reach crisis points (e.g. see the Alt2Su program: Alt2Su – NSW (Alt2Su, 2025)).
   f. Implement national training standards for GPs, emergency services, and mental health professionals, incorporating lived experience insights.
   g. Increase funding for the recruitment and retention of peer workers, ensuring they are recognised and valued within the system.
   h. Commitment from the states and territories under the new NMHSPA to work with the Lived Experience Workforce Association when it is in future operation, which will require funding through the Agreement.
2. Call for Community-Identified Solutions to Community-Identified Problems:
   a. Develop targeted funding strategies to improve access to mental health care and suicide prevention in rural and remote areas.
   b. Prioritise place-based models that empower communities to design and deliver solutions that meet their specific needs.
   c. Establish clear accountability mechanisms for service effectiveness, ensuring transparency in decision-making.
   d. Strengthen coordination between Commonwealth and state/territory governments to reduce fragmentation and duplication of services.
   e. Integrate the mental health and suicide prevention system with housing, employment, and social support systems to address broader determinants of wellbeing.
   f. Prevent individuals from being discharged from community mental health and suicide prevention services solely due to NDIS eligibility.
   g. Develop policies ensuring continuity of care for those transitioning between mental health and disability support services.
   h. Recognise the significant overlap between suicide prevention and mental health, ensuring funding and services that reflect this reality.
   i. Allocate adequate resources to ensure localised crisis alternatives (e.g. NSW Safe Havens) are available 24/7.
   j. Expand peer-led crisis services as a compassionate alternative to hospital-based emergency care.

Brief conclusion

Lived experience groups argue for an overhaul in the Australian Government’s top-down approach and traditional ways of thinking. People with lived experience seek to work with the Australian Government in co-producing and co-designing the national mental health and suicide prevention system. This would, however, require sharing power and prioritising the voices of lived experience to identify the principles, values, objectives, outputs, and outcomes of a new Agreement.

The submission