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CEO Update: Celebrating Embrace – and inclusive approaches to mental health

With more than half of Australia’s population having been born overseas or having at least one parent born overseas, an increase in people finding refuge and safety in Australia, the continued impact of racism and discrimination, and current global conflicts, the need for more inclusive approaches to mental health is greater than ever.  

Last week’s Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils Australia’s (FECCA) 2024 Conference in Brisbane highlighted the strengths and challenges faced by culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities across Australia.  

The Embrace Multicultural Mental Health Project team joined others across the multicultural sector talking about programs and community-led approaches to supporting mental health and wellbeing for people from CALD backgrounds. The team’s session shone a light on how a collaborative, long-term focus on funding ongoing mental health initiatives can better support communities and the sector and build an equitable system that reflects and responds to the diverse needs of CALD communities.  

The Embrace project, an initiative of Mental Health Australia in partnership with FECCA and the National Ethnic Disability Alliance, and funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care, was established to ensure that the needs of mental health consumers and carers from CALD backgrounds are better understood and met.  

The cornerstone of the Embrace project is the Framework for Mental Health in Multicultural Australia, a free, national online resource for mental health and suicide prevention services and workforce to evaluate and enhance their cultural responsiveness. If your organisation would like to evaluate and enhance cultural responsiveness and improve your understanding of the needs of multicultural communities, I encourage you to visit the Framework to learn more.  

The Embrace project also delivers the CALD Community Engagement Project (CCEP), supporting community-led, culturally appropriate approaches to mental health services and supports.  It has engaged 11 communities in 12 projects throughout Australia, collaborating with local multicultural organisations in selected CALD communities to identify mental health and suicide prevention needs, and co-design community-led solutions and resources.  

In Brisbane, the Pasifika and Māori community has worked with the Brisbane South PHN to create downloadable videos and other resources that highlight the role of Pasifika and Māori values in shaping mental health wellbeing, and available supports. In Sydney, the Cantonese/Mandarin community have worked with the Chinese Australian Services Society to co-design downloadable resources to inform and promote mental wellbeing and destigmatisation, and deepen understanding of mental health and available services across that community.

The Centre for Evidence and Implementation has been deeply involved in the CCEP from the start, meeting with communities regularly and helping them to embed monitoring and evaluation tools into individual projects, and has commenced a comprehensive evaluation of the CCEP, which is in its final year.  

The learnings will inform the development of a toolkit to support best practice and elevate community-led approaches to mental health, wellbeing and suicide prevention for multicultural communities.  

I’ve spoken before about the gap in national mental health data about communities from different backgrounds, and I’m pleased to share that Mental Health Australia, through the Embrace project, has been funded by the Department of Health and Aged Care to deliver a Report on the State of Mental Health in Multicultural Australia in late 2025.  The report will offer evidence-based recommendations to enhance the capacity and capability of governments and the sector to adopt best practice approaches to support the mental health of CALD communities. It is also a critical step in informing better policy, research, and service development for CALD communities.  

These efforts go a long way to gathering nuanced evidence about the mental health needs of people from CALD backgrounds, but it’s the whole picture that matters.  

By delivering this report we will continue to provide guidance to the mental health and suicide prevention sectors as we collectively strive to improve the mental health of all communities across Australia.  

Carolyn Nikoloski

CEO, Mental Health Australia