The discrimination and exclusion, rejection and disadvantage experienced by people with mental health conditions in Australia needs our attention. This should include our united commitment to reform the current medical system (psychiatry and mental health services) which turn sufferers of mental illness into lifelong victims of stigma, unemployment and disability.

A mental health condition diagnosis should not be a life sentence.

Suffers need to be encouraged and empowered to learn how to manage their own condition, recover fully and live successful independent lives free from constant self doubt about their own abilities and constant doubts arising in their community due to stigma.

Psychiatry, while a very necessary medical science, instills fear and capacity reducing beliefs, forcing people to lose all sense of ability or faith in their own decisions. Rather than allowing persons to recover fully, psychiatry says that it is not possible to recover from a diagnosed 'condition'. Psychiatry says a diagnosis is for life which is controlling abusive discrimination. This attitude stifles and rejects human intelligence.

As a recovered person, I would like to see the following reforms:

1. Goal oriented psychiatry and psychiatric care be made part of a national code of ethics of all psychological and psychiatric health services. Including the practice of issuing written reports of diagnostic assessments to sufferers and the issuing of condition management plans with detailed goals specifying treatment timeframes.

2. Compulsory frequent formal medication reviews to be completed as part of all goal oriented psychological and psychiatric services.

3. Cessation of long term drug therapy of more than 5years.

4. Compulsory use of combined methods of treatment of psychiatric illnesses including assessment and consideration of life stress inventory results, self-assessment questionnaires, medical test results and the use of patient education programs in condition knowledge and stress management.

5. Diagnoses be given 'limited' application; a) to only those conditions still presenting with problematic or significant symptoms. b) that after a symptom free period with no hospitalisations or relapses of more than 8+ years, a diagnosis is made void.

 (A diagnosis, or having been taking medications for a mental health condition, does not automatically constitute a reason to refuse employment by the Australian Federal Police (AFP).  However, due to current psychiatry practices and stigma, the AFP presumes that diagnosed conditions such as bipolar disorder, major depression, schizophrenia and anxiety disorders are lifelong conditions with unreasonably high risk of relapse. Anyone who has suffered one of these conditions is currently not eligible to work for the AFP. https://www.afp.gov.au/careers/entry-level-recruit-policing-and-protective-service-officer-recruitment/medical-and#psychological

Giving people real, not false hope, that they can fully recover from mental illness and lose the diagnosis preventing them from gaining employment or social inclusion after a period of progress, is needed now.

These basic reforms would enable real recovery to be a mainstream phenomenon which is realistically and legally available to everyone.

Such reforms would give credibility to those support programs claiming to help sufferers on their "recovery journey" by defining a realistic achievable destination which is accepted and acknowledged by psychiatry.