Looking for solutions in a psychology crisis
The number of public psychologists in SA has increased in recent years and universities are working to overcome training “bottlenecks” as the health union calls for industry reform and better pay.
The SA Psychologist Association, a sub-branch of the Health Services union, says the industry is on the brink of collapse with salary differences across Australia causing SA psychologists to leave our public sector “in droves”.
“There is currently a critical shortage of psychologists across health, education and all of the public sector,” South Australian Psychologist Association President Deborah McLean said.
McLean said the shortage is “largely driven by really uncompetitive pay and conditions for psychologists in the public sector”.
According to the state government, from March 2022 to March 2025, the number of psychologists at SA public hospitals and health sites has increased by nine per cent, from 220 to 240 staff.
As of March, there are 165 full-time equivalent staff, which is eight more roles than in 2022, showing a 5 per cent growth.
McLean says while there are job opportunities for psychologists in the public sector, there’s a high number of vacancies that can’t be filled.
“In some areas, it’s in excess of 50 per cent,” she said.
InDaily asked SA Health for the current vacancy rate of public sector psychology roles but was told that specific data isn’t collected.
In a statement responding to our questions, SA Health said that “within SA Health, staff are recruited within a set budget and to align staffing to community demand within each Local Health Network (LHN)”.
“In 2024, there were 80 job advertisements for 89 psychology positions, with 219 applicants received,” SA Health said.
“So far in 2025, 158 applications have been received for 48 positions.”
The Psychologist Association are currently in enterprise bargaining with the state government and is seeking a pay and progression structure for psychologists “that accurately reflects the competencies that we acquire throughout our careers”.
“We need fair pay and conditions for psychologists, we need to be building towards parity with our interstate colleagues, so that we’re not losing people from interstate or so that we can draw from an interstate workforce pool,” McLean says.
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Currently, the pay rates for South Australian psychologists, which fall under the Allied Health Professional rating system, are between 10–40 per cent lower than in other states.
When Nepheli Beos started working at SA Health, she was classed as a provisional psychologist, meaning she fell in the AHP1 band.
Some states, like Victoria, are structured to ensure their psychologists are moving up the salary bands once certain requirements are met.
Beos works at SA Health part-time, is completing a PhD and works a second casual job because her part-time wages are “absolutely not” enough to live on.
Though she said she chooses to stay in SA for lifestyle reasons, she would consider moving interstate for better pay and working conditions.
“No one’s going to want to move here to do this job, when you can’t even keep the ones who live here,” she said.
“Who in their right mind would take a job where they could be doing the exact same thing in another state for a minimum of 10 per cent more wage?”
Beos has two more years of training ahead of her to receive a clinical psychology endorsement and says if she stays in the public sector, under the current conditions, a pay rise isn’t a given to reflect that level of training like it is in the private sector.
She chooses to stay in the public sector because the work is “rewarding”.
“I did my final placement in the public sector, and I found it to be really rewarding because I was working, and still am working with, people who present with quite complex mental health conditions, most of them having more than just one,” she said.
“They’re essentially our most vulnerable population, and I know from having done a previous placement in a private practice that those people would not be seen if they were referred to a private practice because they would be deemed too complex.
“So even if they could afford the fees, which a lot of them can’t, but even if they could, they would be turned away.”
Flinders University’s psychology teaching program director Lydia Woodyatt said she understands why early-career psychologists feel disheartened.
“The need is so huge, the work is so hard, and the resources are so few,” Woodyatt said.
“Currently, I think that there’s a great pool of [graduates] going into private practice where psychologists can run their own business, they can work with the freedom and flexibility that they need, and there’s opportunity to build environments where there’s other psychologists, they’re supported in their work.
“Because there’s a mental health workforce shortage, there’s kind of this bleed where that scope of practice is becoming less well defined between mental health practitioners, because it’s like we need anyone, right?
“And in that we’re undervaluing those really specialised skills where people are managing highly complex, highly risky situations, and we’re not rewarding them for the time that that takes to train for those roles.
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“We understand there’s no more money in the pot, so it’s about how do we make that money work in ways that are smart and that provide rewarding careers for people who have to put really significant time into training to do those complex tasks.”
Health Minister Chris Picton said the state government has “recently launched a new recruitment campaign to lure more mental health workers from across the borders and overseas to work in South Australia, to support the expansion of our mental health services and extra beds.”
“The Government has already taken steps to bolster the psychology workforce, with targeted strategies to increase workforce supply, enhance supervision pathways and improve workforce sustainability,” Picton said.
University placement ‘bottleneck’
McLean says a key problem in the public sector is that they’re losing senior clinicians and therefore don’t have the staffing levels to support a junior workforce coming in.
Woodyatt said there is a national shortage of psychologists, but they’ve also seen higher graduate rates.
A Flinders University spokesperson told InDaily that Flinders has seen a strong increase in psychology graduates in their postgraduate programs, increasing the number of provisional psychologists able to enter the workforce over the past three years.
The spokesperson said they experienced an 80 per cent growth rate from 2022 to 2023 and an 18 per cent growth rate from 2023 to 2024.
“Not only are more coming in, more are going into full-time work, more going to the mental health sector,” Woodyatt said.
Woodyatt said a challenge the university faces with placements is a “bottleneck” of field placements and internships, which are crucial to gaining a psychology qualification.
“It is the bottleneck to why we can’t produce more psychologists,” she said.
“[Federal] government has put quite a large amount of money into helping us to partner with psychological providers to try and open up more placements, so we’ve been working really hard over the last few years to do that, but it remains a national issue.”
Year on year, the enrolment into psychology degrees at Flinders University is shaped by how many placement opportunities are available.
It takes about six to 10 years of study to become a psychologist, with the shortest possible pathway requiring you to complete one placement and then a year-long internship. Otherwise, students must do three placements, and at least two in industry outside of Flinders’ own training clinic.
Flinders has received federal government funding, which allows it to offer grants to psychology providers to support placement for students, to offset the cost of taking on an intern.
“Any psychologist that can supervise students can apply for that money,” Woodyatt said.
“SA Health could, for example, apply for that money, even in bulk, if they had a model to accommodate that but the key is, they’ve got to have supervisors available in the business to supervise those students.
“The issue isn’t just having supervisors, it’s having enough staff, it’s having enough space in the workload so you free up staff to be able to do the supervision.”
Health Minister Chris Picton said the government is delivering a dedicated Psychology Workforce Plan “to strengthen, grow, and support the psychology workforce across the public health system”.
“Following public consultation earlier this year, the plan is now being finalised for release, incorporating feedback from psychologists, professional bodies, and key stakeholders across the sector,” Picton said.
“As part of broader workforce reforms, the Government is currently negotiating South Australia’s first standalone Allied Health enterprise agreement.
“This agreement will formally recognise the distinct roles, responsibilities, and contributions of psychology and allied health professionals, and ensure they are supported by contemporary, fit-for-purpose employment conditions.”
Woodyatt said that through Flinders, they’ve had one engagement with the psychology workforce plan, but most of their grant funding has come through federal channels to support building a workforce of graduates.
She said that though she understands the challenges graduates are experiencing, she has more reason for optimism currently than she has throughout her time working in the mental health sector since 2004.
“[Early-career psychologists] don’t get the benefit of hearing sometimes those national conversations or seeing where government is investing,” she said.
“I do think that nationally, and hopefully that will feed through to state level action as well, I’ve seen more energy and effort and money being put into this issue in the last two years than across my whole working life.”
