We’re committed to moving the Australian mental health system away from structural harm to structural healing, and from system crisis to whole of community responses and prevention.
Why the Future of Mental Health as an action area?
In Australia, mental health sectors and systems often mirror the crisis they are seeking to resolve with disconnected and harmful policy and practice. This oft-compromised productivity has costly consequences for everyone involved, both individually and at an organisational level. We see good people within these structures restricted, siloed, and unable to consider or act on holistic or preventative responses.
We want to help these people and structures shift this dynamic.
Our mental health and wellbeing challenges need collective, compassionate, re-engineered whole of society solutions. Broadly, TACSI is committed to working inside and outside of our existing mental health systems in Australia to realise resilient, social solutions to protect human rights and strengthen our wellbeing.
This action area is about reclaiming and strengthening our individual, collective and national rights to mental, cultural, psychological and emotional health by addressing what’s longer serving us head-on with relentless empathy for those invested.
As a first step, we need to foreground Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander wisdom and leadership on how ancient models of holistic healing take into account the whole person, the whole community, and the whole system.
“We want to move the Australian mental health system away from structural harm to structural healing, and from system crisis to system productivity.”
– THE TACSI FUTURE OF MENTAL HEALTH TEAM
In 2020, we developed four action areas to support organisations and communities build a future-fit mental health system and address the structural drivers of mental health.
Read the report here
Our commitment to First Nations First
A critical principle of the Future of Mental Health is to create the conditions that further First Nations self-determination and First Nations knowledge systems, First Nations innovators and First Nations innovations.
It is these things that will bring the strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge to the fore to tackle our toughest challenges.