Mental illness is often treated in community and hospital-based outpatient care services provided by state and territory governments. Collectively, these services are referred to specialised community mental health care (CMHC) services.
State and territory health authorities collect a core set of information for the Community Mental Health Care National Minimum Data Set (CMHC NMDS), which is compiled annually into the National Community Mental Health Care Database (NCMHCD). Data from the NCMHCD are used to describe the care provided by these services. More information about the NCMHCD is available in the data source section.
Key points
- Around 9.7 million community mental health care service contacts were provided to approximately 453,000 patients in 2018–19.
- The most common principal diagnosis recorded for patients during a service contact was Schizophrenia, followed by Depressive episode and Schizoaffective disorder.
- Involuntary contacts accounted for about 1 in 7 (14.0%) of all contacts.
- The most frequently recorded type of community mental health care service contact was with an individual patient (as opposed to a group session), and had a duration of 5–15 minutes.
Data downloads and links:
Community mental health care services 2018–19 tables (187KB XLSX)
Community mental health care services 2018–19 section (486KB PDF)
Community mental health care interactive data
Data source information and key concepts related to this section.
Data coverage includes the time period 2005–06 to 2018–19. Data in this section was last updated in October 2020.
Services provided
Around 9.7 million service contacts were provided by community mental health care services to over 453,000 patients in 2018–19. This equates to an average of 21.4 service contacts per patient.
The national average rate of patients receiving services was 18.0 patients per 1,000 population. The rate was highest in the Northern Territory (29.3 patients per 1,000 population) and lowest in Victoria (11.8) (Figure CMHC.1). Differences in jurisdictional data reporting systems may contribute to the observed variation in service contact rates.