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Victoria’s flagship new youth mental health service is being led by a fly-in, fly-out boss from Queensland, as reports mount of violence, drug use and patient deaths in its first year of operation.
The Parkville Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing Service has been beset by staff claims of deteriorating patient care and frustration with senior management – including chief executive Dr Leanne Geppert, who they say only attends the service for a handful of days a month from her interstate base.
At least six senior youth mental health clinicians, leading specialty programs at the service, have quit, the deaths of two patients last month have been referred to the coroner and WorkSafe is looking into complaints of ongoing security concerns.
Earlier this month, four thugs forced their way into the reception area at the service’s Sunshine campus and assaulted two people and fled before police arrived.
News of the troubled program comes after The Age yesterday revealed a landmark report into Victoria’s progress following the mental health royal commission had been significantly altered to remove remarks critical of the state government’s progress.
The youth service was billed as a major response to Victoria’s mental health royal commission when it opened in June 2025, operating as the state’s first dedicated public youth mental health service for people aged 12-25.
Six workers at the service – including psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses – spoke to this masthead on the condition of anonymity, to detail the senior medical staff exodus, a rise in violent incidents, widespread drug use in secure wards, and claims that the hospital’s management is more focused on its brand than patient care.
One of their most significant concerns is so-called “absentee management”, led by Brisbane-based Geppert who was recently awarded a three-year contract extension.
“The chief executive lives in Queensland. We don’t see her often at all and, when we do, she is dealing with the board,” a senior clinician said.
Geppert was initially appointed as interim chief executive to transition Orygen’s world-renowned clinical service from the Royal Melbourne Hospital’s management into a new standalone state government youth mental health service.
A Parkville Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing Service spokesperson said Geppert was appointed based on “her deep expertise in youth mental health, system reform and clinical service leadership”, and recently reappointed due to her strong performance.
But the government-funded health service refused to provide information about how frequently its chief executive is on site.
“Dr Geppert maintains a regular presence across PYMHWS sites and meets with staff, consumers and stakeholders as part of her leadership responsibilities,” the spokesperson said.
Geppert has a strong background in mental health having previously been the chief of clinical services at Orygen in Brisbane, the Deputy Commissioner for the Queensland Family and Child Commission, and in her continuing role as an adjunct senior lecturer at Griffith University.
But some of Victoria’s most experienced youth mental health experts say they have grave concerns about the flagging performance of the service.
Orygen executive director Professor Pat McGorry has become so troubled by issues within his partner organisation that he last month presented Mental Health Minister Ingrid Stitt with a six-page briefing outlining his concerns.
As well as its Parkville hospital, the service also operates in Sunshine, Footscray and Werribee, where it is co-located and works in partnership with Orygen-run headspace services.
McGorry’s briefing, seen by The Age, claims the organisation is not delivering safe, high-quality or sustainable care, and has failed to spend its budget treating desperate young people due to a lack of staff.
A former Australian of the Year for his pioneering work in youth mental health, McGorry said the “absentee model of management” may have contributed to a wider crisis at the service which undermined vital post-royal commission reforms.
“There are serious concerns that clinical care is being affected and that an escalation in serious incidents involving PYMHWS clients is creating significant risk for PYMHWS patients and staff, for the young people and families attending co-located headspace services and for Orygen’s headspace staff,” McGorry said.
“There are also concerns that clinical practice guidelines are no longer being consistently followed. Patients are being discharged earlier than guidelines mandate and fidelity to evidence-based treatment is declining.”
McGorry told this masthead he had not heard back from Stitt regarding the claims set out in his briefing, and that he remained highly concerned about the situation.
A PYMHWS spokesperson said the service was committed to providing safe, high-quality care.
“PYMHWS continues to perform strongly against the vast majority of measures used to assess our performance,” they said in a statement.
“In its first year, PYMHWS has maintained a strong focus on recruitment and retention as the service has grown. Workforce availability continues to be a challenge across the broader system.”
Australian Medical Association Victorian president Dr Simon Judkins said he was worried the once world-renowned service would not recover if it was not immediately turned around.
“We are concerned that an exemplar service is being ruined by poor management decisions,” Judkins said.
“Huge concerns that if the senior, experienced clinicians continue to leave, this valuable service will not recover.”
A nurse working in the service’s inpatient ward said they were distraught by the recent death of a patient with complex and long-term issues.
After months as an inpatient, the young man was discharged to a hotel room and found dead six days later.
“We did harm here. We were the cause of this harm, and that hurts,” the nurse said.
“We’ve been a health service for all of a year.”
The service said it would be inappropriate to comment on “individuals, specific incidents or potential coronial matters”.
Staff said the patient’s death came amid wider concerns at the levels of drugs being used on wards and the lack of integrated drug and alcohol counselling.
“PYMHWS is not here as a health organisation, PYMHWS is here for the brand,” the nurse said.
“It is about keeping up this image. It is messed up – these are human beings.”
Health and Community Services Union Victorian branch secretary, Paul Healey, said mental health staffing and bed shortages meant young consumers were falling through the cracks.
“The Victorian state government must urgently intervene to fund staff, implement ratios and deliver on the royal commission in the way in which it was intended,” he said.
A senior psychiatrist still working at the service said many of the managers and new clinicians had little or no expertise or interest in youth mental health and the service had abandoned its internationally recognised model that has achieved positive patient outcomes.
“The whole point of the royal commission was that the mental health system was broken, and yet they are dedicated to making it [PYMHWS] look like every other mediocre service,” the senior psychiatrist said.
“There has been a complete takeover by bureaucrats whose sole focus is corporate structure and values, and activity targets with no real purpose, certainly not good patient outcomes.
“There has been an exodus of expertise, including many senior leaders in the field. They have left in despair because their decades of painstaking work and progress is being destroyed.”
PYMHWS told The Age its workforce had grown by 42 per cent in its first year, with five new people hired for every one who departed, while transitioning the 500-strong workforce from Royal Melbourne Hospital into the standalone youth service.
Another psychiatrist, working in a different area of the service, said care for complex patients was being displaced in favour of lower acuity patients that look better on a reporting spreadsheet.
“It’s like Peter Mac saying: ‘We’re now going to treat ingrown toenails’,” the doctor said.
The psychiatrist said well-documented and researched long-care options were being pushed aside.
“That is being absolutely run into the ground by people that are either not competent enough to know what it involves, or are wilfully destroying it.
“So we seem to be moving back to a model of episodic care, which is everything that we really kind of pushed against 30 years ago, knowing that it didn’t work.
“And management doesn’t listen. None of them have ever attended our clinical reviews, they don’t really know what we do.”
WorkSafe confirmed it was now monitoring the service over the ongoing incidents.
“WorkSafe is monitoring the workplace to ensure health and safety obligations are being met and health and safety risks are being adequately addressed,” a WorkSafe spokesperson said.
If you or anyone you know needs support, call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.
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