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An available and effective rural mental health workforce is critical to the provision of contemporary mental health care. During the last 5 years new mental health plans and strategies have been released every state and territory of Australia. This policy analysis examines the extent to which workforce, and particularly rural workforce issues are considered in these policies. The analysis revealed that rural workforce issues receive scant attention in state and territory mental health plans. Rural Australians comprise 28% of the total population, yet rural workforce issues are canvased, on average only 6% of the time general workforce issues are addressed. National mental health workforce plans do focus on the rural workforce, but these are not referenced in the state or territory strategies or workforce plans. Given the rural mental health workforce shortages, and consumer challenges in accessing rural mental health services, more planning and consideration to supporting and developing a rural workforce appears warranted., (© 2019 National Rural Health Alliance Ltd.)

An editorial is presented on the COVID-19, leadership and lessons from physics. Topics include the times of crisis and major disruption bring leadership values into focus, particularly the values of political and public service leaders, the leader needs clarity about their personal and organizational values, and the history of dealing with changing demands, health services have experience in deploying and redeploying staff and resources in response to rapidly changing circumstances.

This paper describes the older people's mental health workforce development, policy development and implementation process and quantifies the rural service delivery and access impacts over a 15‐year period in New South Wales. It highlights the factors that are considered to be critical to successful rural service development such as commitment to funding parity, investment in strong local service leadership, and development of innovative, locally adapted rural service models. Building on these foundations, the Older People's Mental Health Program in New South Wales was able to address key challenges relating to service access in rural health and develop new, sustainable specialist older people's mental health service networks. A sustained focus on policy and implementation which explicitly supports rural older people's mental health service enhancement, and development of evidence‐based models of care, has significantly improved access to specialist mental health care for older people in rural areas. It has delivered 23 new rural older people's mental health community teams and a 440% increase in the number of people accessing these teams. It has also doubled the number of acute inpatient units and established new specialist mental health‐residential aged care partnership services in rural New South Wales. It has resulted in increased access to services for the "older old," while not diminishing older people's rates of access to general adult mental health services. It has also supported innovative, sustainable rural service models such as "hub and spoke" models and step‐up step‐down inpatient services that build on existing health and hospital infrastructure and link geographically dispersed specialist clinicians and services together in rural service delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People diagnosed with mental illness have relatively poor physical health and die earlier than their counterparts in the general population. People living with mental illness in rural Australia have three times the risk of premature death than the total population. This article reviews recent international, Australian and New Zealand research, identifies the increased risk of early death of people living with mental health issues in rural settings and looks at the need for policy and practice responses. The 'Equally Well' national initiatives are described in Australia and New Zealand, which seek to systematically address this inequity as a matter of priority. Finally, it argues for co‐design and consumer participation in policy development, program implementation and research. Improved understanding of the perspectives and priorities of people with experience of mental illness is vital if change is to be fully realised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the Rural Health Conference in Hobart held in March 2019 which showcased how people have made a difference in rural health. Topics include that the conference showcased research studies demonstrating how innovative services improved health; an discusses that many of the presentations reported the result of short‐term projects, and described years, and often decades of engagement, planning and implementation and evaluation.

An editorial is presented that discussed the impact of extreme temperatures on rural Australia as in result with the drought, drying rivers, algal blooms and fish kills. It discussed the re-emergence on social media of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) program that shows the levels of collusion, non-compliance and also presents the development of a national rural and remote mental health strategy.

The author comments on the proposed introduction of a Rural Health Commissioner in Australia to enhance the health care of rural Australians. The author stresses the importance of independence, rural credibility, political support and longevity of the Rural Health Commission in order to succeed. The author warns about health workers' lack of living and working in rural areas and points out the need of the commission to remain above politics.