For many of us, forced to work at home or to not work at all, the COVID-19 crisis has driven home the importance of mental health and how work interacts with our sense of wellbeing.
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The world-leading researcher and founding director of youth mental health foundation Headspace, Patrick McGorry, has warned that as the virus subsides we will see a big surge in the need for mental health care, including pain management.
So it's with anticipation then that the Productivity Commission is set to release the final report of its 18-month inquiry into mental health and productivity in June.
The draft report, released in October, is a good start - but it needs to be more holistic to inspire confidence and a reform agenda.
It found that the economic costs of poor mental health were shockingly high, amounting to 10 per cent of Australia's gross domestic product. That's before COVID-19.
It reported that mental illness typically begins before the age of 25, but didn't expend much effort examining why.
The draft report did acknowledge the need to focus on children and young people and early intervention as a way of improving mental health, but took too little account of the major risk factors that operate early in life including abuse in the home and poverty.
Although it has been well established that poverty contributes to inadequate housing which contributes to stress, the inquiry's chairman, Stephen King, said at the outset that addressing poverty and inequality was beyond his terms of reference.
It's a lost opportunity. King's inquiry could have and should have the courage to examine if not tackle some of the things that lie behind mental illness, especially given what COVID-19 lockdowns reinforced about the role of inequality.
There have been many earlier government reports on mental health, but this one is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset how we view it.
Mental and public healthcare workers have been urging the commission to make prevention the centre of the report's recommendations.
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While no one in those sectors will reject the extra services that the report is likely to offer, they want more done to address the underlying causes of mental health issues.
Better access to safe and secure housing would be a start.
As would consideration of what it will mean for more of us to work from home post-crisis, if that's what happens.
Working from home can not only further blur the lines between home and work, creating new stresses, it can contribute to sedentary lifestyles that can make people more likely to develop depression. Then there is the question of "are we really more productive working from home?".
The coronavirus crisis has highlighted the importance of connecting in real ways, as well as through a screen.
And it serves as something of a dress rehearsal for the next, more serious crisis.
The draft report included only a cursory reference to climate change. Its impacts on work, mental health and our ability to contribute to the economy are likely to be much worse.
It brings us back to the fundamental notion that when health is a priority and health inequalities diminish, the population is better able to recover from whatever shocks it faces and an economy can better recover.
After COVID-19, we should not reduce the safety net to shrink national debt and deficit because that would be more devastating to people's health and productivity in the long term. It could make all the difference between finding hope and finding despair.
- Toni Hassan is an adjunct scholar with the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, Charles Sturt University in Canberra. She has worked in public health.
