People’s problems don’t come in neat little boxes – and that includes mental health. Mental illness comes interconnected with other health, social and financial problems, so why should services providing support for all those problems work in silos?
Our submission to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System talks about how to improve mental health outcomes by bridging the gaps between different service systems supporting the people and communities most vulnerable to complex social problems that negatively affect mental health.
Mental health exists in a context
While mental illness does not discriminate, some people and communities are disproportionately affected by mental health problems. This includes people and communities experiencing co-occurring and compounding problems that are socially determined, like
- barriers to educational access and attainment
- experiences of stigma and discrimination
- lack of access to quality and secure housing
- social isolation and economic insecurity
In our submission to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, we say that it takes integrated, multidisciplinary and client-centred service responses to address the complex and compounding health, social and legal problems that drive poor mental health.
Health justice partnership is one service model that aims to do just that. By embedding legal help into healthcare services and teams, they provide an opportunity to identify and address the complex systems that compound disadvantage and, with that, legal need, and poor health and wellbeing.
Our recommendations
Recommendation 1: Mental health must be understood within a broader social determinants framework.
Recommendation 2: Integrated, multidisciplinary and client-centred service responses are required to address the complex and compounding health, social and legal problems that drive poor mental health.
Recommendation 3: Service funding and investment in collaborative capability should support the expansion of health justice partnerships and other integrated approaches that enable existing services to meet the needs of people with complex and intersecting needs affecting their mental health.
Recommendation 4: Integrated and collaborative service models require sustained investment over time in capability and capacity.
Recommendation 5: Funding for services should support collaborative service models and opportunities to translate collaborative service models to other service settings and contexts.
Recommendation 6: The value placed on best practice should not come at the expense of innovative, placed-based solutions that can meet the needs of people not otherwise met.
A practical solution
Health justice partnership provides an innovative and practical solution to closing the service gaps through which people vulnerable to mental health-harming legal problems routinely fall.
