This week I have asked team member Erin to write our Blog as she heads off on maternity leave.
Today is my last day of work at Mental Health Australia before beginning my parental leave. Having a baby is one of the most hopeful acts I can think of. It constitutes a belief that my child will at least have a tolerable future despite the pandemic, and the looming threat of climate change. It involves entertaining the possibility that things might be better in the future too. Hope is something we grapple with when we work in the area of mental health reform. We can’t ignore the fact that the same findings and recommendations for change have been articulated over and over, since before I was born. The 1983 Richmond Report’s recommendations regarding the mental health workforce, service integration and quality, accountability, the role of people with lived experience in shaping reform, and investment in community-based care are echoed through many subsequent reports, including last year’s Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health, and the 2020 Productivity Commission’s Inquiry Report into Mental Health. We’re currently waiting on another National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement which, if it’s any good, will echo these old themes yet again. The looming budget later this month and election later this year bring promises of change. It will remain to be seen what reforms are actually implemented and at what pace. In this context, hope for uncomplicated progress towards a better future is a sign that you aren’t paying attention. This is not to say that things haven’t changed. Rebecca Solnit reminds us in her book, Hope in the Dark that one of the traps that people working towards change can fall into is thinking that the way things are now is the way they’ve always been, and the way they always will be. “The status quo would like you to believe it is immutable, inevitable, and invulnerable, and lack of memory of a dynamically changing world reinforces this view.” Over time, people with lived experience of mental ill-health have become far more likely to live and thrive in the community. There has been a greater integration of human rights in care settings. People have been increasingly empowered to speak to their experiences of distress. They’ve been increasingly empowered to enact self-care strategies and to care for the mental health of those around them. I’ve observed myself how much easier it has gotten to talk about mental health over each year. With close friends, I can speak about my mental health the same way we speak about the weather – it is matter-of-fact, and often a routine part of a conversation. Discrimination, stigma, human rights violations, huge shortages in services, and other complex problems still persist. But we do ourselves a disservice when we fail to recognise how far we’ve come, or to recognise the countless people who have contributed to this change. The sense of hope I feel is guarded, couched in caveats. It’s formed from Martin Luther King Jr’s observation that “the long arm of history bends towards justice”. There is so much work to be done. What I hope for isn’t necessarily that specific outcomes will be achieved in a specific timeframe (in that case, I’d have hoped we’d be done already!), but that this work is worthwhile unto itself, that it is meaningful for the beneficiaries of incremental change and for those working towards it. I hope that my child will get to see the fruits of this work, and will have the opportunity to work towards something even greater.
Have a great weekend, 
Dr Leanne Beagley CEO, Mental Health Australia | 
