Workforce shortages and their impact on Australian youth mental health service reform

Youth mental health has become an important focus of health service reform in Australia, through Federal government funded initiatives such as headspace National Youth Mental Health Foundation. Underpinning the success of such initiatives is the availability of an appropriately skilled health workforce. This paper describes some of the major health workforce needs of the headspace initiative, and presents current data on the availability of key workforce components - youth workers, social workers, psychologists, mental health nurses, general practitioners and psychiatrists. Workforce shortages in many of these fields are evident and impact on the successful implementation of headspace, and other mental health service reforms.