Centre History

The Centre for Mental Health and Community Wellbeing was originally established as the Centre for Mental Health (CMH) in 2013 as part of a restructure of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. The School had for some time had an emphasis on improving mental health at a population level. CMH brought together three of the School’s existing organisational units with considerable strength in this area, namely the Mental Health Workstream of the Centre for Health Policy, Programs and Economics, the Population Mental Health Unit, and the Centre for International Mental Health. These became the Mental Health Policy and Practice Unit (headed by Professor Jane Pirkis), the Population Mental Health Unit (headed by Professor Anthony Jorm), and the Global and Cultural Mental Health Unit (headed by A/Professor Harry Minas), respectively.

In 2018, Professor Nicola Reavley took over as the Head of the Population Mental Health Unit. In the same year, a fifth unit – the Recovery and Social Justice Unit – was established, headed by A/Professor Lisa Brophy. That unit continued until the end of 2019, when Lisa took up a position as a full professor at La Trobe University. Lisa still holds an honorary position with us and we continue to collaborate.

By 2021, the Mental Health Policy and Practice Unit had become quite large and developed a sub-specialty in quantitative methodologies, so a decision was made that key epidemiologists and biostatisticians from that group should form their own unit. This became known as the Mental Health Epidemiology Unit (headed by Professor Matthew Spittal).

At the end of 2023, the Child and Community Wellbeing Unit (which had previously been part of the Centre for Health Equity) joined CMH. This unit subsequently changed its name to better reflect its purpose and activities, and became known as the Disaster, Climate and Adversity Unit (headed by Professor Lisa Gibbs).

The work of the Disaster, Climate and Adversity Unit had many synergies with the work that was already occurring in the other units of the CMH, with much of it relating to improving the mental health of communities, particularly in relation to disaster recovery and resilience. However, the new unit also expanded CMH’s horizons (e.g., bringing in a focus on climate change, family violence and childhood physical health and wellbeing). For this reason, the Centre changed its name in 2023 to CMHCW to reflect the additional emphasis on community wellbeing.

In 2025, A/Professor Gregory Armstrong rejoined CMHCW, bringing his team from the Nossal Institute for Global Health. Gregory has taken over as the head of the Global and Cultural Mental Health Unit, a role which A/Professor Harry Minas had ably filled since the original Centre for International Mental Health was established in the early 2000s.