Alumni and guests are invited to join the Cambridge Society of Australia for Lunch with Prof Allen Fels AO, who will be talking about "Mental Health - The Challenges".

Some three to four percent of the population experience severe persistent mental illness e.g. schizophrenia.  Another fifteen percent or so experience significant mental illness e.g. depression, anxiety disorder, personality disorder etc. 

Professor Fels will discuss the causes and incidence of mental illness; the nature, strengths and weakness of the current system for dealing with problems of mental illness; and policy issues.

Some of the policy issues include:

• Does mental health need to be accorded a higher priority by governments and the community? 
• Could the present system be improved (even if there is limited additional funding)? 
• What is the link to matters such as housing and employment? 
• Stigma and discrimination
• Social connectiveness of people with mental illness
• The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and mental health

Allan Fels was born and educated in WA, gaining a law/economics degree from the University of Western Australia. He then went to Duke University in USA to do his PhD. He obtained a job as Economic Research Fellow at Cambridge from 1969 to 1972. He then returned to Australia and worked at Melbourne and Monash Universities, becoming Professor of Administration at Monash in 1984 and then Director of the Graduate School of Management from 1985 to 1990. During this period, he was the Prices Commissioner for Victoria, on the Commonwealth Prices Surveillance Authority and Chair of the Trade Practices Commission until these two latter organisations were merged to form the ACCC in 1995. He was Chairman of the ACCC from 1995 to 2003. Upon his retirement from the ACCC, he became foundation Dean of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government until 2013.He has been very active in the field of mental health and was Chair of the Australian Government's National Mental Health Commission from 2012 until 2018.