Just two of 21 mental health centres meeting key benchmarks

Nineteen of Victoria’s 21 adult mental health and wellbeing services are failing to meet their target for admitting acutely mentally unwell Victorians to a bed within eight hours.

Five years after the state government promised to fix the broken mental health system, data shows more than half of patients are languishing in emergency departments because there are not enough specialist beds to treat them, and most facilities are using seclusion and restraints far more often than they are supposed to.

Medical groups say the Victorian government’s failure to open promised new acute mental health beds and community services demanded by the royal commission is fuelling a crisis for the most unwell psychiatric patients.

In fact, the Department of Health’s quarterly performance data shows the state has gone backwards since the royal commission’s final report was handed down in 2021, when 49 per cent of were transferred to a bed within eight hours despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The average currently sits at 46 per cent.

The situation has become so severe that across Victoria only one adult mental health and wellbeing service has consistently met the target of admitting 80 per cent of patients to a mental health bed within eight hours, the figures show. The April to June 2026 data is expected to be published within the next fortnight.

With emergency departments bearing the brunt of wider systemic issues, the Australian Medical Association’s Victorian branch met with Health Minister Ingrid Stitt on August 20 to express its alarm at the situation confronting acutely unwell mental health patients and those trying to treat them.

But AMA delegates told The Age they came away from the meeting confused at the government’s claims it had delivered more new mental health beds than anyone working in the health system can account for.

The 2021 royal commission recommended the government introduce at least 270 new adult mental health beds, but the industry – including the commission set up to monitor implementation of the royal commission’s recommendations – can only account for 174 as being opened .

Stitt, however, told the AMA delegation that 230 new mental health beds had been opened, while refusing to give a breakdown of where the beds were during the August 20 meeting or in the weeks since.

AMA Victoria president Dr Simon Judkins said that regardless of how many new beds had been opened, it was nowhere near enough.

“People just cannot access the help they need, and we are not doing enough for prevention,” Judkins said.

“They come to emergency departments and have to stay for hours and hours in an environment that is completely unsuitable ...