Abstract
The Australian mental health system is weathering a deep crisis that places us at a critical juncture. The decisions to be made in the coming months could have adverse impact for dec-ades. The Allison et al. (2020) paper tackles two critical issues in this pro-cess, though largely based on argua-ble premises: (a) the number of psychiatric hospital beds needed, and (b) the role of the National Mental Health Services Planning Framework (NMHSPF) as a planning tool for the public resourcing of mental health services.Local estimates based on the Atlases of Integrated Mental Health Care (Romero-López-Alberca et al., 2019) partially support Allison’s claim. The number of acute beds in Western Europe is broadly similar to that in Australia, but the number of subacute and non-acute hospital beds and the number of community residential beds are fewer in Australia. However, there is a substantial difference between stating that ‘the total availa-bility of non-acute psychiatric beds in Australia is lower than in country “X”’, and inferring from this that ‘psy-chiatric non-acute beds should be increased by N% in the health district “Y”’. Such national figures provide no useful indication of a local mental health system’s need for hospital beds or effective community alternatives.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1154-1156 |
Number of pages | 3 |
Journal | Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry |
Volume | 54 |
Issue number | 12 |
DOIs |
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Publication status | Published - Dec 2020 |