Initiatives for improving mental health services to ethnic minorities in Australia

Abstract

Several major policy initiatives have been undertaken in Victoria, Australia's second-largest state, to address difficulties in providing accessible and culturally sensitive mental health services to ethnic minorities. These initiatives include the development and publication of a policy statement, alteration of funding formulas to take into account populations of persons with non-English-speaking backgrounds, incentive funding mechanisms, new funding specifically devoted to ethnic mental health, the establishment of service development positions in the major public hospital networks, and the establishment of a pilot project to employ bilingual staff as psychiatric ease managers.