Australia’s national mental health strategy in historical perspective: beyond the frontier

The history of Australian psychiatry is entwined with the impact of European (British) invasion and settlement, initially in 1788, to form penal colonies to alleviate the overcrowding of English jails, which generated a masculine-dominated, individualistic culture. As European settlement in Australia expanded, the colonisers tried to come to terms with this remote, vast landscape and fought over land and resources with the original Aboriginal inhabitants, who had been there between 40 000 and 60 000 years. Australian psychiatry was profiled in a previous article in International Psychiatry (issue 10, October 2005).