The Not Broken Project

About 7 million Australians (over 1/4 of the population) are taking mind-altering drugs for emotional distress and behavioural challenges (anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD) as well as for ’serious mental illness’ (1-2% of the population). Their experiences are real and deserve proper care.

A ‘chemical imbalance’ hypothesis - the idea that something is wrong or broken in a person’s brain on a biological level that a drug can fix - justifies widespread prescription of these drugs. Scientific evidence does not support this theory.

Validation of symptoms can be a positive experience, but assuming a person may need drugs for life is disempowering, stigmatising, and false. The negative effects of these drugs can be life-altering and withdrawing from them can be very difficult. In Australia no meaningful help exists for deprescribing.

Social, environmental and developmental factors can play a major role in emotional distress and behavioural challenges, but drugs don’t address  these.

Current drug-based approaches lead to ineffective government spending, distorted support systems and discourage development of better solutions.

The Not Broken Project aims to raise awareness around the problem with overmedicalising distress and hopes to advocate for better systems in health and society.

Most people seeking help for mental distress or behavioural challenges will access support without being left feeling they have a broken brain or lifelong deficit that can only be helped by biomedical intervention.

There will be greater attention to and support for social and interpersonal solutions that help people manage their particular circumstances.

When doctors prescribe drugs to relieve mental distress or behavioural challenges, they will do so understanding that in most cases they are suppressing symptoms, not correcting an underlying chemical imbalance.

The Not Broken Project has three main goals:

1. Raise awareness of problems that have arisen from seeing emotional distress and behavioral difficulties as malfunctioning biology requiring prescription of psychotropic drugs. We encourage the public, medical professionals and policymakers to think more critically about the use of diagnostic labels and related prescribing.
2. Help medical practitioners better serve their patients through a solid understanding of the scientific basis of what psychotropic drugs can and cannot do, their side effects and problems withdrawing from them. 
3. Change government policies to reduce the personal, social and economic costs of ignoring what patients, as well as science, are saying.   

Ultimately, our hope is that a greater share of medical resources will be deployed to support the 1-2% of Australians who suffer serious mental illness and that the spending on less severe cases will be directed towards more appropriate interventions that target the underlying issues rather than trying to suppress symptoms with drugs

The Social Prescription (TSP) is dedicated to reforming mental health management. TSP focuses on innovative strategies to address social determinants of health, aiming to improve wellbeing and connectedness. By fostering partnerships with key people and organisations from a broad range of sectors and settings, we strive to create sustainable solutions that empower individuals and communities.

We currently offer workshops and training packages on Situational First Aid to primary healthcare providers, youth workers, workplace services providers. As the project grows, we hope to expand our training to other organisations.

TSP has a useful page of resources for general practitioners (linked here), including strategies for managing distress and referral pathways for social prescribing.

As part of TSP, we're also launching the Not Broken podcast hosted by Jon Jureidini that explores how we think about distress.

If you're interested in TSP or Situational First Aid, please browse our site, subscribe to our newsletter and contact us directly with any  queries or suggestions.