Getting mental health reform back on track: a leadership challenge for the new Australian Government. In reply.

From the late 1950s, specialist mental health services started rapidly moving out of asylums. In the 1970s, this was accelerated by the human and civil rights movements. In 1983, the Richmond Report of mental health services in New South Wales provided the fi rst coherent policy framework in Australia to underpin the process. In 1993, as Australia fi nalised its fi rst National Mental Health Strategy, the Burdekin Report on the human rights of people with mental illness highlighted systemic failures in both community and institutional care.