Fixing the NDIS won’t help the one in five Australians living with these challenges

April 28, 2026 — 3:30pm

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Australia has two crises in social policy. However, they are different. The highly visible, much-discussed NDIS spends too much and applies to too many people, according to the government. Since Wednesday, there has been a commitment and a strategy to fix it.

The less visible, less-discussed mental health system is the opposite: it spends too little and applies to too few people who need care and support. And it lacks a commitment and strategy for reform.

The mental health challenge is very big. More than 800,000 Australians have a severe mental illness, mostly of psychotic forms (e.g. schizophrenia, bipolar). Every year, one in five Australians between 16 and 85 years old experiences a mental health challenge requiring care and support.

One failure concerns the “missing middle”. At one end, there’s a system for dealing with primary mental health problems. It mostly involves GPs and psychologists. It is imperfect and inadequate. Nevertheless, the system does exist.

At the other end, there is a system for dealing with people in severe distress, including those experiencing psychotic outbreaks. It is hospital care. That system has even more imperfections. These days, overstretched hospitals only consider accepting someone when they are in acute crisis.

In between lies a vast and largely unserved population of people with moderate to severe mental illness with complex needs, involving people with anxiety neurosis, chronic deep depression, borderline personality disorder,........

© The Age