Victoria's mental health system has "catastrophically failed to live up to expectations", Australia's first royal commission into the sector has found.
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The landmark state inquiry released a 680-page interim report on Thursday, with nine recommendations calling for the Victorian government to take a new approach to mental health and responding to some of the most immediate challenges.
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"Once admired as the most progressive in our nation, the state's mental health system has catastrophically failed to live up to expectations," the four commissioners wrote in the report's forward.
"Past ambitions have not been realised or upheld, and the system is woefully unprepared for current and future mental health challenges."
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Royal commission chair Penny Armytage and commissioners Allan Fels, Alex Cockram, and Bernadette McSherry have spent the year holding public hearings and reading submissions to the inquiry, promised by the Andrews Labor government in the lead up to the 2018 election.
The government has already made a commitment to implement all recommendations from the royal commission.
"It is not good enough to just do more of the same. As a community, we have allowed mental health to remain hidden," Ms Armytage told reporters at parliament on Thursday.
"The recommendations that we have made include a commitment to the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal Victorians, the establishment of a centre for mental health and wellbeing.
"The expansion of services and responses developed by people with lived experience, most especially the establishment of our first residential service for people run by and designed by people with lived experience."
- AAP
