Mental Health Services in Australia

Abstract

Australia is a large island continent with some 17 million inhabitants, most of whom live in an urban environment around the more fertile coastal fringe. Modern Australia is a developed country. It was originally inhabited by the Australian Aborigines; but in the last 200 years, it was colonized by the British. Multicultural immigration has characterized Australia's development. Table 1 gives a breakdown of the ethnic composition of Australia [1]. During the first hundred years of British colonization, the Australian continent was divided into separate colonies, which subsequently became states, each with its own government relating to Great Britain. In 1901 the separate states united into a federation of six states and one territory, with a federal government, which in 1911 moved into the newly created Australian Capital Territory (A.C.T.). The two most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria, contain over half the population, whereas the bigger states in terms of land area Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory are sparsely populated. Tasmania, the smallest state, is an island south of the mainland. Today, more than 20% of Australians were born overseas, and more than half of these come from non-English-speaking backgrounds. More than two million Australians speak a language other than English at home.