Victoria has pledged to create an independent Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission.

The State Government this week released the final report from its mental health royal commission.

It describes a mental health system operating in crisis mode, which has “catastrophically failed to live up to expectations”.

It calls for major changes to stop hospital emergency departments from being used as entry points to assistance. 

Its recommendations include calls for a boost to community-based services which are currently underfunded, as well as the phasing out of seclusion and restraints treatments over the next decade, and leaving compulsory treatments as an option of last resort.

The final report recommendations outlined in a mammoth five-volume, 3195-page report.

The report covers over 30 findings across several major themes, describing a system driven by crisis, without the capacity to meet demand, and one that overlooks the views of people with lived experience of mental illness.

“There are limited opportunities for people with lived experience of mental illness or psychological distress to truly lead, participate in and promote change, and the mental health system falls behind other social sectors in this regard,” the report says.

The report made 65 recommendations, in addition to the nine from its interim report.

The recommendations focus on “transformational reform”, across four key aspects;

  • creating a responsive and integrated, community-based system 

  • attuning such a system to promote inclusion and addressing inequities;

  • re-establishing confidence by prioritising and collaborating on reforms

  • creating contemporary and adaptable services

Premier Daniel Andrews said his government would implement all 74 of the commission’s recommendations.

“Mental health impacts all of us … And yet the truth is, that suffering just isn’t being taken seriously enough,” Mr Andrews said in a statement on Tuesday.

“People are either ‘not sick enough’ for help, or ‘too sick’ to treat outside a hospital. These big gaps in the system mean that people are falling between the cracks.”

He said the report would serve as a blueprint for “the biggest social reform in a generation”.