Community Mental Health Australia

03/11/2026

Heading to the Rural Mental Health Conference 2026?

Be sure to check out the presentation by Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA) National Policy Director Kate Hawtin and Founder of Running for Recovery and CMHA Cultural Consultant Brendan Larcombe.

Kate and Brendan will be presenting 'The Nuances of Social Prescribing in Rural Communities' exploring how we can mobilise rural community supports within metrocentric dominated systems.

The ACDC Cultural Consultants around Australia are undertaking community research activities in rural and regional areas including Cairns, Cherbourg , Katherine, Launceston, Alice Springs and the Barossa Valley.

Catch them Thursday November 5th at 12:30PM.

20/10/2026

People with lived experience, researchers, advocates and leaders from around the world connected at the 2026 Global Mental Health Summit in Boorloo Perth from 14-16 October 2026.

Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA) contributed to the conversation in partnership with Centre for Social Impact (CSI) with CMHA CEO Kerry Hawkins and CSI Senior Research Fellow Lisette Kaleveld presenting their research into the economic value of psychosocial support.

We know the value of psychosocial support cannot be measured by numbers alone. People with lived experience, their supporters and community organisations have long understood the difference these community-based, non-clinical supports make.

When used with care, economic analysis strengthens our collective voice to help guide investment, policy and system design, helping ensure these supports are recognised in the decisions that shape our mental health system.

Centred on the theme Building Resilience, Equity, and Culturally Responsive Integrated Support Systems, the Summit stood out for the diversity of voices it spotlighted.

Presenters repeatedly challenged systems overlooking the social and structural drivers of distress, arguing that many existing models of care are poorly equipped to respond to the complexity of people's lives.

For many of us, Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman's keynote on the impact of racism on wellbeing in Australia was a conference highlight. Reflecting on identity and belonging, the Commissioner spoke candidly on the systemic barriers and attitudes that continue to undermine people’s wellbeing and participation in the community.

From tens of thousands of years of Aboriginal kinship to community knowledge developed in cultures across the world, we have a wealth of wisdom shaped by lived experience, human rights and self-determination. The challenge isn't knowing what to do to help people to thrive, but whether we can build systems prepared to listen.

13/10/2026

Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA) CEO Kerry Hawkins was a keynote speaker at the William Glasser International Conference 2026, held in Coolangatta on the Gold Coast from 2 to 4 October 2026. The conference theme, Embracing Courage: Pathways to Connection and Wellbeing, brought together educators, researchers, mental health practitioners and leaders from Australia and around the world.

Kerry is a respected voice in Australian mental health reform, known for bold leadership and a clear vision for human rights driven change. She leads CMHA, the national body representing community managed mental health organisations at the federal level. She is a former three term National Mental Health Commissioner, a Churchill Fellow, and an alumna of Boston University's Global Leadership Institute and the Harvard Kennedy School's Implementing Public Policy program.

Her keynote, Connection, Courage, and Collective Change: Reimagining Mental Health from the Ground Up, took the audience through the history of how we understand recovery. She covered decades of thinking, from institutional care to clinical recovery to personal recovery, and argued that the next step is relational recovery.

"For too long, our systems have located distress in the space between people's ears. The evidence, and the lived experience of so many people, tells us it more often sits in the space between people," Kerry said.

Learn more: https://cmha.org.au/kerry-hawkins-delivers-keynote-at-wgi-conference-2026/

12/07/2026

This NAIDOC Week, Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA) joins the national community in marking a significant milestone under this year's theme, 50 Years of Deadly.

Culture, identity and connection to Country are inseparable from wellbeing. For CMHA and the community-managed mental health sector, NAIDOC Week is a moment to reaffirm that mental health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities improve when culture leads and communities are in control of the solutions.

"We know that self-determination isn't just a principle, it's what actually improves outcomes," said Kerry Hawkins, CEO of Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA).

"When Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities lead the design and delivery of mental health support, that support works better, because it's grounded in culture, not layered on top of it."

"NAIDOC Week is a time to celebrate, but it's also a time for organisations like ours to reflect on whether we're doing enough to back that leadership, in policy, in funding, and in who holds decision-making power," she added.

CMHA recognises that this week, and the work it represents, belongs to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Our role is to listen, to follow the lead of First Nations communities and organisations, and to keep pushing for the structural change needed so that self-determination is backed with real resourcing and rights, not just marked once a year.

"Fifty years on, this theme is a reminder that progress hasn't happened by accident, it's happened because people kept showing up, generation after generation," Kerry said.

"That history matters, but so does what we do with it now," she concluded.

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CMHA acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and pays our respects to Elders past and present.

We recognise their culture, heritage and right to self-determination.
Read more about the official 2026 NAIDOC theme at www.naidoc.org.au

08/07/2026

New research shows psychosocial mental health supports deliver strong value and significant cost savings, but Australia has barely scratched the surface of measuring their true economic worth.

Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA) engaged the Centre for Social Impact at the University of Western Australia (CSI UWA) to examine the economic evidence behind psychosocial support, the non-clinical, community-based programs that help people experiencing mental distress build the housing, employment, relationships and daily living experiences that make up a full life. The resulting report, Capturing the Economic Value of Psychosocial Support, was explored in depth at a free public webinar on Tuesday 7 July 2026.

The research highlights the substantial economic burden of mental distress on the Australian economy, and points to strong results where psychosocial programs have been rigorously evaluated, including significant reductions in hospital and emergency presentations, and meaningful gains in people’s quality of life.

CSI UWA Director Professor Paul Flatau said the findings reinforced what the sector has long argued: that psychosocial support is good value, and worth backing.

“Where economic evaluations of psychosocial support programs have been undertaken, the results are strong,” Professor Flatau said.

“We’re seeing genuine improvements in people’s quality of life alongside real cost offsets, programs that return people to the workforce, or divert them away from expensive hospital and clinical care,” he added.

“The opportunity now is to build on this evidence. With only a handful of Australia’s psychosocial programs fully evaluated so far, there is enormous scope to strengthen the case even further, and to give funders and policymakers the confidence to invest with certainty,” said Professor Flatau.

Learn more: https://cmha.org.au/new-mental-health-research-puts-economic-case-behind-psychosocial-supports/

25/06/2026

We invite you to register for the upcoming webinar; Investing in Mental Health: The Economic Case for Psychosocial Support, presented by the Centre for Social Impact.

Attendees will hear from the research team, Professor Paul Flatau and Lisette Kaleveld, alongside Community Mental Health Australia CEO Kerry Hawkins, who will share insights on how psychosocial supports create value for individuals, communities and government systems. Together they will examine practical approaches to capturing this value, the key gaps in the current evidence, and the implications for policy, funding and service design.

Click to learn more:

We invite you to register for the upcoming webinar, Investing in Mental Health: The Economic Case for Psychosocial Support, presented by the Centre for Social Impact.

25/05/2026

We love seeing our members out in the world championing community mental health, and Northern Territory Mental Health Coalition CEO Geoff Radford did exactly that in a recent episode of the Get Real: Talking Mental Health and Disability podcast.

Hosted by Emily Webb and Karenza Louis-Smith from ermha365, Get Real has frank, fearless conversations about mental health and disability in Australia. And Geoff brought plenty of both.

In the episode, Geoff speaks passionately about community mental health supports in the top end, the power of peer workers, the importance of First Nations-led and community-controlled services and more. He offers a grounded and thoughtful take on what the shift toward foundational supports could mean for people with psychosocial disability in the NT.

One highlight is his description of Enough Talk, Time for Action, a grassroots program from Daly River that has measurably improved all seven domains of the social and emotional wellbeing wheel. Proof, if you needed it, that community-led approaches work.
It is a great listen. Head to the Get Real podcast to hear the full conversation.

Or visit our website for links: https://cmha.org.au/spotlight-on-the-top-end-geoff-radford-on-get-real/

09/05/2026

Congratulations to the Australian Association of Peer Workers!

Earlier this week marked a genuinely significant moment for the mental health and su***de prevention sector, and for every peer worker who has ever wondered whether their role would be recognised, valued, and supported in a way that endures.

The establishment of the Australian Association of Peer Workers is that recognition. And it has been a long time coming.

Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA) warmly congratulates the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance, the Indigenous Australian Lived Experience Centre, and Mental Health Carers Australia on coming together to establish the Australian Association of Peer Workers and commends the Australian Government for delivering the seed funding to make this possible.

Peer workers bring something that cannot be taught from a textbook: the lived experience of navigating mental health challenges, often within the very systems they now help others to access. For too long, that contribution has been deeply valued on the ground and under-recognised at the structural level.

We know the difference that peer workers make in people's lives. The evidence is there. The stories are there. Now the national architecture to support them will be there too.

CMHA has had the privilege of working alongside the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance, Indigenous Australian Lived Experience Centre, and Mental Health Carers Australia for some time, and the relationships between our organisations are ones we hold with genuine respect.

The establishment of the Australian Association of Peer Workers is the next chapter in exactly that kind of collaboration, built on respect, equal standing, and a shared commitment to a mental health system that truly sees people.

“Our sincere congratulations to the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance, Indigenous Australian Lived Experience Centre and Mental Health Carers Australia, and to the peer workers who have advocated for this moment,” said Kerry Hawkins CEO of CMHA.

“Peer work is not a peripheral function of the mental health system, it is one of its most human expressions,” added Kerry.

“A national association that gives it national voice, standards, and career pathways is long overdue, and worth doing well,” she said.

Community Mental Health Australia looks forward to the ongoing collaboration with CEOs Priscilla Brice, Aunty Vicki McKenna, Katrina Armstrong and their teams.