This report examines the affordability and access challenges people face when seeking mental health care and ways to strengthen Australia’s mental health financial safety net (the net). The net refers to funding supports that ease or offset the direct, personal costs of accessing treatment for diagnosable mental health conditions. The authors identify opportunities for improvement and offer key recommendations to ensure financially vulnerable Australians can access the care they need without falling into hardship.

The report maps how current funding mechanisms - across both public and private sectors, including Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), income supports and insurance systems - function collectively as the financial safety net. This report is intended to help those responsible for the mental health financial safety net design and management to fundamentally improve outcomes for those who rely on it. 

Key recommendations

• Embed a whole-of-system priority investment approach to improve affordability.
• Implement a national mental health data strategy to address the immediate affordability challenges.
• Develop a coverage and outcome framework that models and monitors the cost of failure points.
• Provide more effective affordability relief for financially vulnerable groups.
• Develop a shared, evidence-based framework for assessing mental health conditions across both private and public sector contexts.
• Review the coordination and integration of private and public funding mechanisms.
• Identify opportunities for coordinated investment.
• Redesign insurance products and pursue innovations that provide more appropriate and cohesive mental health support.