No young person should have to navigate a mental health crisis through the emergency department — cut off from family, friends, and community.
There is another way. It’s what the Open Dialogue Centre exists to build: a shift from crisis to community.
Open Dialogue is a strengths-based, relational approach that puts listening and human connection at the centre of mental health practice. It shifts the question from ‘what’s wrong with you?’ to ‘what matters to you — and who do you want beside you?’
When services work this way, something changes. Workers stay engaged because they can see real outcomes. Families and communities become part of the response, not bystanders to it. And young people are supported by the people who know them best — family, friends, lived experience peers and local services.
Through initiatives like Goulburn Region Open Dialogue Connect (#GRODC) in Victoria, we’re seeing what’s possible when organisations transform how they work together with community-based approaches. Communities across Australia are already asking how they can do the same — and ODC is there to help them do it, building the workforce capability, practice conditions, and national evidence base for systemic change that sticks.
ODC recently had the privilege of speaking with Russell Razzaque about #ODDESSI — the landmark UK trial that is set to shift the dial on how the world thinks about #mentalhealth practice. His message for those of us working to move systems from crisis to community is very exciting — and the implications for Australia, and globally, are significant.
This is one to watch.