July 05, 2024
Mental health targets good basis for action
The chief Executive of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission has welcomed new mental health and addiction targets.
The five targets set out by Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey include cutting the wait to access mental health support or be referred to a specialist, training 500 mental health and addiction workers a year, up from the current of 72, and allocating 25 percent of mental health and addiction investment towards prevention and early intervention.
Hayden Wano says targets are a good start for collective action.
“We welcome the targets on that basis but they will be challenging but I think they’re in the right place. Targets set a framework for the system to operate in a more coherent way and certainly one of the challenges that causes delays in access to services is workforce but also departments and system not working coherently togewther,” he says.
Mr Wano says the targets will need to be monitored and responded to where improvements can be made.