NT Election 2024
The NT Lived Experience Network is part of a coalition of NT Mental Health NGOs who have been working together to get Mental Health on the 2024 NT Election Agenda.
United Call for Action on Mental Healthcare in the Northern Territory
MEDIA RELEASE | 21 August 2024
Key Asks
The Northern Territory NGO Mental Health Sector have collaborated to identify key asks for our sector in the NT for the upcoming election (see infographic):
• Delivery of a new NT Mental Health and Related Services Act (including stakeholder engagement of a draft bill and proposed implementation and awareness raising of the bill)
• Commitment to a Minister for Mental Health and Well Being
• Funding for an NT Lived experience network/peak body (representing the collective experiences and perspectives of active services users and their family/kin)
• Investment in Mental Health Workforce;
◦ Fund Cyclical and bespoke workplace initiatives
◦ NT Lived experience workforce strategy
• Support Closer to Home services e.g “more Sub-Acute options and Safe Spaces”
There is also a letter of support from Mental Health Nurses.
Media Releases
NT records critical shortages in mental health workforce, new data shows
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, 16 Aug 2024
Radio
ABC Radio, 21 August 2024 | Alice Springs Breakfast (ABC Listen) [segment starts at 1:10:15]
ABC Radio Darwin, 20 August 2024 | Breakfast at 07:32 a.m. – Isentia (mediaportal.com)
A coalition of mental health NGOs has issued a challenge to whichever party takes government in the Northern Territory this weekend to recognise the lived experience of mental illness through a series of law reforms. Oliver Chaseling reports.
Labor and the CLP have both been asked to seek advice from people with lived experience of mental illness if they want to address the underlying factors of crime and acute hospital presentations. The NT’s Mental Health Coalition and Lived Experience Network have issued a statement calling for investment in a mental health workforce that has experienced, or continues to experience chronic mental illness. According to the Lived Experience Network, the NT has badly fallen behind other states and territories in having out-of-date mental health laws and no peak body to represent active users within the mental health system.
