The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) welcomes the continued engagement of Australian jurisdictions with the psychiatry and the mental health sector, including lived experience representatives, following the first meeting of Health and Mental Health Ministers for 2025.

The College engaged with Federal, State and Territory Ministers ahead of the 13 June meeting, and briefed them on core issues raised by our members and the community, including:

• Improving coordination across states and territories: Including coordination between public and private mental health systems and increasing access to Community Mental Health Services.
• Mental health and psychiatry workforce shortages: National leadership and strategy, increased transparency on outcomes, and funding sustainable long-term solutions to attract, train and retain the psychiatry workforce.
• Releasing the DoHAC Data modelling tool: The RANZCP has worked closely with the DoHAC on developing psychiatry workforce supply and demand modelling.  
• ADHD: Protecting quality and safety for diagnosis and treatment, nationally uniform prescribing rules for clinicians, multimodal care, and developing national training materials for upskilling GPs in response to state government announcements regarding prescribing practices.
• Child, adolescent and youth mental health: Calling for coordinated and long-term national reform, better linkages between perinatal, child, adolescent and youth services, and clearly defined models of care.

While the meeting fell short of decisive action towards reform, the College notes several positive outcomes of interest to the sector.

Workforce

• Ministers endorsed the publication of the Psychiatry Supply and Demand Study, which highlights workforce shortages and informs future planning.
• They supported developing a national mental health workforce capability framework.

ADHD diagnosis and treatment

• Ministers agreed to discuss options for national alignment of ADHD prescribing practices at the next meeting, consistent with the Federal Government’s commitment to expedite nationally consistent prescribing rules for Schedule 8 medications.

Child and Youth Mental Health

• Ministers agreed children and young people (0-25 years) will remain a priority population in the next National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement and supported a renewed focus on the National Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

Psychosocial Needs

• Ministers agreed that addressing unmet psychosocial needs will be one of the central priorities for the next National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement.
• They agreed to a National Mental Health Information Sharing Framework, developed by NSW, to improve inter-jurisdictional information sharing for mental health consumers.

You can read the Australian Government’s communique following the meeting here.

Next steps for the College

These forums remain a critical avenue for engagement with Australian governments. We will continue to call for greater collective action to reform the mental health system, particularly growing the psychiatry workforce.