No gold medals: Assessing Australia’s international mental health performance

Objective: The objective of this study was to present an assessment of Australia’s mental health system performance, within its social context, by comparison with other countries. Method: A review of existing literature and databases from both Australia and overseas was undertaken. Systems permitting international comparison of mental health and its social context are few. The review is limited in scope. Results: Although Australia was one of the first nations to develop and adopt a national mental health policy (in 1992), the data that are available suggest that we are not World leaders across the identified domains. Conclusions: While international benchmarking can play an important role in fostering quality improvement, there are only limited mental health or social system performance data sources to utilise. It would be desirable for a more systematic international process to be established to review existing approaches and design a new multilateral strategy. It would be important that this new strategy reflected the full experience of mental health and its broader social context.