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Lessons from Pennsylvania: Why Australia Cannot Afford to Repeat These Mistakes

AWARENESS STATEMENT

For Immediate Release

1 August 2025


Lessons from Pennsylvania: Why Australia Cannot Afford to Repeat These Mistakes
Lessons from Pennsylvania: Why Australia Cannot Afford to Repeat These Mistakes

A two-year independent investigation in Pennsylvania has revealed the devastating consequences of underfunding, broken promises, and systemic neglect in mental health care. Once heralded as a leader in deinstitutionalisation and community reform, the state’s vision for a modern, community-based mental health system has collapsed into a grim reality of homelessness, incarceration, and preventable deaths.


The key lessons from this investigation are stark:


  • Broken Promises: State commitments to close outdated psychiatric hospitals were never matched by sufficient investment in community-based care.

  • Chronic Underfunding: Base funding was cut in 2013 and never restored, eroding services year after year. Inflation compounded the damage, leaving counties unable to sustain programs.

  • Justice System as Default Care: With community supports stripped back, jails became the de facto mental health system, despite being ill-equipped to provide care.

  • Missed Opportunities: Even when stimulus funds became available during the pandemic, politics redirected them away from adult mental health reform, deepening community despair.


Why This Matters for Australia


At the Vocational Mental Health Practitioners Association of Australia (VMHPAA), we see clear parallels with Australia’s own risks. Our country has already faced warnings from Productivity Commission reviews, Royal Commissions, and frontline practitioners that systemic reform is overdue, funding is patchy, and access gaps are widening.


If we fail to act boldly and decisively, we risk repeating Pennsylvania’s mistakes, building systems that promise care but deliver incarceration, seclusion, and despair.


What Australia Must Do Differently


  1. Sustain Community Funding: Long-term, indexed investment must replace piecemeal, one-off grants. Mental health care cannot depend on budget cycles.

  2. Recognise the Whole Workforce: Vocationally trained counsellors, peer support workers, and community practitioners must be embedded in the system alongside psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. These professionals are often the most accessible and culturally responsive.

  3. Prevent Criminalisation: We must stop prisons from becoming mental health facilities by expanding community-based crisis, recovery, and psychosocial supports.

  4. Transparency and Accountability: Promises of reform must be matched by measurable outcomes: beds delivered, practitioners employed, wait times reduced.


As Chair Shane Warren reminds us:

“Pennsylvania shows us the cost of neglect. Australia cannot afford to let mental health reform stall at words and reports. Real people are lost in the gap every day. Our system must be accountable not for how much is promised, but for what is delivered.” Shane Warren

And as Secretary Susan Sandy adds:


“The most powerful safety nets are often community-based and vocationally delivered. If we invest in those now, we can stop people from falling into jails, ED corridors, and cycles of relapse.” Susan Sandy

Call for Action


VMHPAA calls on Australian governments to:


  • Fully fund community mental health services at scale;

  • Recognise vocationally trained practitioners as essential in prevention and early support;

  • Close the accountability gap by reporting not just funding commitments but lived outcomes;

  • Ensure mental health investment is protected from political horse-trading and short-term diversions.


Australia has a chance to learn from Pennsylvania’s failures. Let’s not squander it.


Media Contact:

Shane Warren, Chair

Susan Sandy, Secretary

Philip Armstrong, CEO

VMHPAA



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