In our research on the history of community mental health, we trace the critical perspectives and practices that have inspired and shaped the history of community-based mental health services in Australia. Our research draws upon several historical and ethnographic methodologies, including the co-production of knowledge, narrative inquiry, and oral history in addition to more traditional methods such as archival research, literature searches, and locating and analysing “grey” literature.

Almost half of our project team identify as people with a lived experience of mental distress and at least half of the people interviewed for this research project will be people with lived experience.

The study is leading to new insights about the following:

A. How did community-based mental health service get started in Australia? Who took the initiative? Who and what supported them? Who were the movement leaders or change agents involved?

B. What happened? What kind of initiatives were undertaken? What was innovative about them? What were (and are) the opinions of mental health professionals, consumers of mental health care, and their friends and families about these services?

C. What were the outcomes? Who benefited and who did not? Which services lasted and which ones were abolished? Why?

D. How can insights into the development and operation of community mental health services assist in articulating alternatives for current forms of mental health care, which have come under repeated criticism?

Our research is supported by a Discovery Project Grant of the Australian Research Council (DP190103655): The Development of Australian Community Psychiatry after 1970, awarded to Hans Pols (historian of medicine); Paul Rhodes (clinical psychologist), Anthony Harris (psychiatrist) (all at the University of Sydney) and Catharine Coleborne (University of Newcastle)