Messages of support
We approached people from a range of backgrounds in this project. Here is a picture of their support.
“For too long people harmed in mental health systems have been left without validation, support and justice. This report is an invitation to the Victorian Government to recognise its central role in harm experienced by people in the Victorian mental health system, and to engage in a genuine and ongoing process of accountability and change. A restorative and reparative approach is vital to reflect the systemic and long term nature of these harms and ensuring that any official response to harm is driven by the goal of ‘never again’ and building a just future.”
— Associate Professor Linda Steele, Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney
“The failure of trusted institutions to help those they are responsible for assisting can hurt deeply. Restorative justice offers a pathway for institutions to exercise courage and leadership in finding ways to heal that hurt and prevent its reoccurrence.”
— Associate Professor Miranda Forsyth, RegNet, Australian National University
“Current mental health policy sits in the shadow of the large psychiatric institutions of the past. Transitioning to a more just era of mental health crisis support requires an open-eyed acknowledgement of past wrongs, and a commitment to ending any residual harms that continue today.”
— Piers Gooding, Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne
“This is a very special detailed report which should sound helpful alerts, echoes and resonant recognition for our governments, our mental health service institutions and agencies, whether public, private or NGO, our mental health professions, and those who have to depend on them. Whether they will be heeded or not, depends on how open to reflection, receptive to acknowledgement of harms done and collaboration towards change these bodies are, or how defensive, placatory or silent a response is received from each of them. I hope that it leads to many promising initiatives whether for mental health service-users, providers and organisations in Victoria and our nation.
There are some notable exceptions to those who may have been instrumental, complicit or compliant with such harmful practices. These exceptions include longstanding movements combining mental health professional allies, advocating together vocally in close consultation and in unison with individuals of lived experience & their families. This has occurred for promoting effective community alternatives to hospital-centric care; for human rights with careful consultation about decision-making and more engaging, voluntary and unrestrained care; early intervention for mental health disorders in young people; trauma informed practices; and family engagement, support and interventions, and at co-owned and co-produced forums and conferences. So, this demonstrates that it doesn’t have to be a matter of them vs. us. While power sharing is not new, the truth is that it has not been prevalent enough in our field.
We all need to find a way to engage with and address this wider call from individuals of living experience and their families to listen, hear and act. This entails coming together in a stepwise process of formal truth-telling, acknowledging harms, public apology, carefully negotiated redress, then true reconciliation and power sharing between partners, as we have been learning from the gift to all Australians of the First Nations’ Uluru Statement of the Heart.
Then we can clear the air and all get onto the front foot in working together to create mental health-care ecosystems that are available, accessible, humane, hospitable, kind, thoughtful and effective, for all who need them. Such initiatives as this report, offer an invitation, an opportunity and a possible map for a most overdue journey together towards joint leadership between individuals of lived experience, their families, service providers and policy makers.”
Professor Alan Rosen, AO, Community Psychiatrist, Universities of Sydney & Wollongong, and Far West NSW Aboriginal Communities.
“Mental Health Carers Australia welcomes the release of the Not Before Time: Lived Experience-Led Justice and Repair report.
The report, which advises Victoria’s mental health Minister on how to formally acknowledge harm in the mental health system, has national implications. Families, carers, and supporters across Australia are harmed by mental health systems that either underreach in their support, are ineffective, or overreach in encroaching on the rights of mental health consumers in their life.
The recommendations for a Restorative Justice Process and public apologies are significant, ground-breaking, and entirely pragmatic. A Restorative Justice Process will provide families, carers and supporters an opportunity to share the harm they have endured in their interactions with the system and as a consequence of the system. It will be an opportunity for the Victorian Government to hear and record these harms, to develop a shared understanding with the mental health sector, and to move forward to a better mental health system based on relational recovery. Public apologies following a Restorative Justice Process will not mark an end-point, but rather a beginning point, for mental health reform.
We support calls for these recommendations in Victoria, while also encouraging governments across Australia to consider them in their jurisdictions.”