Mental Health in the Emergency Department Consensus Statement

We, the undersigned, are people who have worked in an Australian Emergency Department in a public hospital, have worked with an emergency department (ED) or have sought help from an ED while experiencing a mental health crisis. We wish to share our deep concern at the unacceptable state of mental health support available to people seeking help through EDs and to urge you to act immediately to improve this situation.

As health professionals, we commit to doing everything we can to provide timely and appropriate care in response to people in mental health crisis, and to advocate for improved care and support based on the principles and priorities set out below. We appreciate that effective reform takes time and that system improvements will require collaboration between governments and key stakeholders. We have therefore identified four actions that can be immediately implemented by governments to improve the safety and quality of mental health care and support for people presenting to an ED in crisis.

Read the full statement.

We ask that:

1. All Australian Governments act urgently to engage people with lived experience in reforms that deliver timely access to appropriate mental health care, with an immediate focus on after-hours care in the community.
2. When psychiatric admission is required, processes need to be timely and streamlined so that acutely unwell people can access an appropriate inpatient bed any time of day or day of the week.
3. State and territory health departments adopt a maximum 12 hour length of stay in the ED, by providing accessible, appropriate and resourced facilities to allow for ongoing care beyond the ED, with mandatory notification and review of all cases embedded in the key performance indicators of public hospital CEOs.
4. All 24 hour waits in an ED should be reported to the Health Minister regularly, alongside any CEO interventions and mechanisms for incident review.