The national day of empty platitudes is upon us once again: R U OK? Day. And it’s apparently important, because as the media keeps reminding us, mental health issues are at epidemic levels. Interesting, then, that so very little has changed about how we manage people’s brains. Like, at all.
Thu 10 Sep 2026 11.12 AEST
Photo: AAP Image/Alan Porritt
The national day of empty platitudes is upon us once again: R U OK? Day. And it’s apparently important, because as the media keeps reminding us, mental health issues are at epidemic levels.
Interesting, then, that so very little has changed about how we manage people’s brains. Like, at all.
The year R U OK? Day launched in 2009, I was working in local government, recently divorced, and in such dire mental straits that I tried to rope-free bungee jump off a few balconies. So sad was I that when the customer service team brought around yellow cupcakes with logos on them, I thought, at least someone is trying something.
The problem is: seventeen years later, we’re still trying the same thing.
In this time period (ish – the surveys don’t line up exactly), the number of Australians living with a “mental disorder” (The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s phrasing) in a 12-month period did not decrease, as you might expect. Actually, it went up a little, from 20% to 22%. Which is weird, because we have had so many morning teas.
Obviously, not enough. So, here we go again. Which is ironic because of course, as the saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.
Today, around the country, office kitchens, teachers’ lounges and boardrooms will again ring with the joyous celebration of people cured by someone’s direct questioning of their mental wellbeing. There’s no background briefing; no one is trained on steps to follow if someone says they’re anything other than OK. After all these years, the strategy is still to ask a difficult question and hope the answer doesn’t make anyone feel too bad.
Perhaps unrelated: a 2023 Monash University study found “no evidence” of reduced suicides or suicidal behaviour resulting from R U OK? Day. There has also been no correlating increase in mental health plans or psychiatric prescriptions.
R U OK? Day itself dances around these results. “You might be surprised to learn that many people underestimate the power of an R U OK? Conversation,” says its website, misunderstanding the word “underestimate”. Its impact stories describe an increase in how many people feel comfy asking someone if they’re ok (89%), and how many people responded that they are, in fact, ‘not ok’ (40%).
It does not seek to find out how those 40% of people are doing now.
R U OK? Day’s own research reveals “9 in 10 of those who were asked, ‘are you OK?’, report feeling grateful, cared about, and supported”, none of which are measurable mental health outcomes.
The website does have a button you can click to find “Everything you need to make it meaningful”, whatever that means. It sounds more promising than it is: rather than offering scripts, contact numbers or therapeutic products, the link takes you to a form. If you fill out your business details, you’ll get to download posters, videos and calendar planners, all of which are are presumably therapeutic treatments for mental illness on a planet other than ours.
Quality research, analysis, explainers and factchecks from experts you can trust.
Unfortunately, the rest of our mental health care is similarly imaginary.
Funding has increased in real terms but proportionately it’s been more or less flatlining for thirty years. When R U OK? Day began, mental health made up about 7% of Federal and state/territory health spending. Now, in the year of our increasingly tired lord 2026, that number has grown to … about 8%.
Most of that money goes to Medicare and the PBS. Mental health research – required to drive any forward momentum in this feelings nuclear winter – got about 4% in the most recent reporting year. And most of that money is spent on autism (not a mental illness) and depression, despite the higher mortality rates of actual mental illnesses such as substance use disorders and eating disorders (which get the lowest funding per capita).
This is happening at a time when Australia is facing a growing shortage of psychologists – the government puts that undersupply at around 57%, which means it’s meeting less than half of the demand, and it expects the gap to grow to 96.6% by 2038. It’s happening while one in five people say cost is the prohibiting factor to accessing professional care, and while half a million Australians can’t access specialist mental health care gatekept by the NDIS.
The thing is, everybody knows this. Mental health service providers know it. Our elected representatives know it. Anyone who has tried to access mental health support knows it. And R U OK? Day knows it.
As a nation, Australia has 27 specialised mental health beds per 100,000 people – the lowest per-capita rate ever. The proportion of people being seen on time in emergency departments has dropped to 60%.
Those 40% of people I mentioned earlier, who respond to the question with, “No, I’m not OK actually, but thank you for this delicious cake” – where do they go? Not to a hospital, which will leave them vulnerable in a hallway. Not to a psychologist, who might have a waiting list of three months. It is Australian mental health care is hotlines all the way. Call Lifeline, then Beyond Blue, then the Suicide Callback Service, then when you’ve exhausted the freecall numbers, figure out which catchment area you’re in so the hospital crisis team can talk you out of going to hospital (no beds).
The problem with organisations like R U OK? Day – which receives about 8% of its funding from federal government – is that they continue to push the illusion of help.
It’s not even like applying a band-aid; it’s more like tearing a band-aid from someone’s recent skin graft. Mental health issues are precarious, delicate, needing careful management. Encouraging people – not just friends, but colleagues, acquaintances, frenemies – to open a wound knowing no one is there to close it is irresponsible at best.
In 2009, when a plucky new nonprofit with a big heart decided to have a morning tea, it felt like the start of something. But without real funding in place, it’s proven ineffective year after year. We need a moratorium on cupcakes masquerading as mental health care, and on the wanton disregard for the people who unwrap them.
Dr Anna Spargo-Ryan is an award-winning writer. She is the author of three books, A Kind of Magic (2022), The Gulf (2017) and The Paper House (2016). Anna was the inaugural winner of the Horne Prize for her essay The Suicide Gene and holds a PhD in truth, memory and life writing.
