Mental health problems in today's Australia

August 14, 2026

Kos Samaras has pointed out the high levels of mental health issues in today’s Australia and the shortfall in the provision of services and funding. However, better funding, whilst it would be welcome, would not solve the present mental health crisis in Australia. This is because the current treatment for mental health issues, pharmaceutical and therapy, are not very effective. A few organic mental health conditions aside, the causes of mental health issues are not in the person but in their environment. Children are born into the world with expectations of living in the natural world, and nothing in the urban, suburban or industrial agricultural environment of the present corresponds to this.

Mental health issues are caused by people’s foreground experience of the daily indignities that neo-liberalistic capitalism forces them into accepting (inequality, inability to make ends meet, inability to balance work and child- and family-care), and then added to this the knowledge of the destruction of the natural world and global warming, which results in increasing calamities.

These pressures lead to mental health issues and in some cases to violence and consequent trauma and/or addiction which adds further the mental health burden.