Report card shows failure to invest in community mental health, say psychologists
6 November 2025
Response from AAPi to AMA mental health report card:
AMA - Record wait times for mental health patients in EDs remain unchanged
The Australian - Mental health crisis laid bare as psychiatrists urge reform
The AMA’s public hospital report card on mental health is proof that community-based psychological care remains inaccessible to too many.
Peak body for all psychologists, the Australian Association of Psychologists, said the fact that emergency departments continue to be overwhelmed with mental health cases demonstrated a system-wide failure.
Executive Director Tegan Carrison said: “This isn’t just a hospital issue. The AMA rightly points to exit block, bed shortages and triage delays - but those problems are downstream. The upstream issue is that people cannot access timely, affordable psychological care.”
Ms Carrison again called for an increase in Medicare rebates across the board to $150 per psychology session, and for the restoration of 20 sessions under the Better Access program.
“These two elements should be seen at the very least as a preventative measure. For every patient sitting in an ED for seven hours in a state of distress, there is someone in the community who was deterred by out-of-pocket costs or limited to just 10 sessions.
“The AMA cited one of the causes was ‘a lack of investment in community and primary mental healthcare’. This means psychologists.
“Psychologists play a vital role in grassroots mental health care and their value must be acknowledged through deeper investment.
Ms Carrison said the future generation of psychologists must also be supported through paid student placements and the introduction of Medicare rebates for provisional psychologists.
“If we continue to treat mental health as a hospital issue rather than a community one, this crisis will only deepen,” she said.
ENDS
Download the PDF.
About AAPi
AAPi is a not-for-profit peak body for psychologists that aims to preserve the rich diversity of psychological practice in Australia. Formed in 2010 by a group of passionate grassroots psychologists, AAPi’s primary goal is to address inequality in the profession and represent all psychologists and their clients equally to government and funding bodies. Its primary mission is to lobby for equitable access for the Australian public to professional psychological services such as Medicare Better Access Scheme and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.