Introduction
In the mid-20th century, Australia followed the world in dismantling its mental asylums. These were vast institutions — Kew Asylum in Melbourne, Callan Park in Sydney, Glenside in Adelaide, and Graylands in Perth — where thousands of men and women with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and severe depression were confined, often for life.
So from the 1960s onwards came deinstitutionalisation. The vision was bold: close the asylums, bring people back into the community, and replace confinement with dignity.
But what was promised was never fully delivered. The asylums were indeed closed — Larundel in Melbourne closed in 1999, Callan Park’s psychiatric services were wound down in the early 2000s, and Glenside was redeveloped into smaller units. Yet the community-based alternatives were underfunded, fragmented, and inadequate.
Today, the results are impossible to ignore. Roughly a third of Australians seeking homelessness services report mental health issues. In prisons, rates of severe mental illness are multiples higher than in the general community.
And drugs have filled the gap. Methamphetamine, cannabis, and alcohol are not luxuries but survival tools for the abandoned — crude, destructive ways to silence voices or dampen terror.
We tell ourselves that closing the asylums was progress. In some respects, it was — no one should be warehoused in Dickensian institutions. But let’s be honest: we simply traded one form of neglect for another. From the locked ward to the park bench, from the asylum to the jail cell, abandonment remains the constant.
What Should Have Been Done
Deinstitutionalisation could have worked — if it had been matched by robust investment. That would have meant:
- Long-term supported housing with onsite mental health staff.
- Community mental health clinics with 24/7 crisis teams, not nine-to-five offices.
- Early intervention programs for youth at risk of psychosis.
- Integrated dual-diagnosis services to treat addiction and mental illness together, not separately.
Instead, we closed one door without opening another.
A Call for Sympathy
When we see a man shouting at shadows on a street corner, or a woman pushing all her belongings in a trolley, we too easily write it off as a “lifestyle” or “their fault.” But for many, it is simply a matter of bad luck — the misfortune of being born with a severe mental disorder in a society that dismantled the asylums yet never built the safety net to replace them.
Homelessness in these cases is not a choice. It is an illness unaccompanied by adequate care. The least we can offer is sympathy, and the most we must demand is reform: a system that treats severe mental illness not as a private failing but as a shared social responsibility.
How Others Fared: Italy, the UK, the US
Italy
Italy closed its psychiatric hospitals almost entirely after the Basaglia Law (1978). The difference was that Italy invested heavily in small, community-based mental health centres, open 24/7, with strong local accountability.
United States
The result is stark: America’s jails and streets are now the largest “mental health institutions” in the country. Los Angeles’ Skid Row or the mental health crisis in New York’s Rikers Island jail are direct legacies of this failure.
United Kingdom
The UK closed its large hospitals but built more structured community mental health teams. Yet even there, austerity cuts since the 2010s have eroded supports, and the familiar cycle of homelessness and incarceration has re-emerged.
The Lesson
Australia’s story looks closer to America’s than to Italy’s. We closed the wards but didn’t build enough bridges. The lesson from abroad is clear: deinstitutionalisation can work, but only when political will and sustained investment match the ideals.