By Chris Griffiths, CEO, Tacklit

Mental health services are under extraordinary pressure. Demand is soaring, workforce supply is shrinking, and funding models are shifting. In this environment, leaders are told that technology will be their saviour.

And yet, the tools on offer often feel like they were built for someone else. General-practice systems, hospital EMRs, bolt-on telehealth apps and none were designed with the nuance of mental health in mind.

The result? Organisations are left feeling inadequate because their workflows don’t fit the system. But here’s the truth: it’s not you, it’s the software.

Across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Asia, we keep hearing the same stories. Different markets, same pain points. Do you recognise yourself in these problems? Take comfort as you’re not alone.

And more importantly: these challenges can be solved.

1. The Referral Black Hole

Referrals still arrive via fax, PDFs, or phone calls scribbled on paper. Staff spend hours manually typing information into systems, often creating duplicates.

The irony? In 2025, your streaming service knows what you want to watch before you do or Temu can deliver you a parcel from across the world in 3 taps on your phone. But your referral inbox can’t tell if a new client is the same person who came through last year.

2. The Tyranny of the Note

Clinicians complain about “note fatigue.” Forty-five minutes with a client becomes another 20 writing it up. Multiply that across a caseload and suddenly Sunday afternoons disappear.

Notes should capture insight, not consume lives. The best systems now use AI to draft notes from shorthand or voice, saving five minutes per session. That’s not a gimmick; it’s an extra client seen, or an earlier finish time.

3. Programs That Don’t Flex

Most digital systems assume one linear pathway: intake → sessions → discharge. Real mental health doesn’t work like that. You run trauma groups, mentoring programs, blended digital and face-to-face interventions.

When systems can’t cope, staff reach for spreadsheets. And spreadsheets become the shadow operating system of mental health.

4. Assessments Stuck on Paper

K10, GAD-7, DASS-21 and the like are valued validated tools, but in too many services they’re still photocopied, hand-scored, and filed.

That means leadership teams talk about “outcomes” without hard data. Meanwhile, funders are demanding proof.

Digital assessments aren’t just faster. They close the loop between care delivered and impact measured.

5. Lost in Translation

In multi-cultural cities like Auckland, Sydney, London, or Hong Kong, multilingual delivery is non-negotiable. To meet clients where they are means being able to provide information and experience in a preferred language is paramount. Yet most systems treat it as an afterthought. Machine translation mangles nuance. Parallel processes creep in.

Mental health is built on trust and meaning. If your tools can’t speak the language of your clients, you risk losing both.

6. Calendars That Don’t Understand Care

Generic calendars are fine for dentists: one chair, one client, one slot. Mental health is different. You run group sessions, write reports, run supervision, outreach on site visits, critical incident responses. You need to track travel time, admin time, and billable time. And layer in multi programs, locations vs. virtual, funding rules and scaled care teams then the complexity soon becomes overwhelming.

Trying to cram this complexity into simple Outlook style tool is as effective as writing up your clinical notes on a post-it.

7. Flying Blind Without Data

Ask most service leaders: How many clients are active today? How many sessions are billable this month? What outcomes can we prove?

Too often, the answer is a rueful smile or a promise to “get back to you.” Not because leaders don’t care, but because their systems can’t tell them without large amounts of data wrangling.

Data shouldn’t be a luxury. It needs to be a available to the right person, with the right context, at the right time.

8. The Client Experience Time Warp

Your clients order food, book rides, and manage finances on their phones. Then they come to you and you hand them a clipboard.

Every missed appointment, every dropout is partly a reflection of this disconnect. If clients can’t engage easily, they disengage entirely.

9. Systems Frozen in Time

Mental health doesn’t stand still. New funding streams, new outcome measures, new service models arrive every year.

But changing your system to these new adaptions can feel about as easy as asking a typewriter to send an email. So services build side-systems, duct-taping spreadsheets and forms together.

You end up running two realities: what your system can handle, and what your service actually does.

10. The Licence-and-Leave-You Trap

Too many tech vendors treat their job as done the moment the licence agreement is signed. They drop off the software keys and disappear.

No co-design, no implementation support, no change management, no long-term roadmap. Just a login and a bill.

For mental health services, this is often not the right approach. Because rolling out a new system isn’t like setting up email or payroll. It’s about reshaping clinical workflows, retraining frontline staff, and rethinking how care pathways are delivered. It requires partnership, not abandonment.

When the vendor vanishes, the service is left holding the bag resulting in half-implemented systems, burned-out staff, and leadership teams wondering why the “digital transformation” feels like a digital fail.

Why This Matters

None of these problems are unique to your service. That’s the point. They are systemic. They arise because mental health has been forced to live inside systems never designed for it.

And systemic problems require sector-specific solutions.

What Good Looks Like

Imagine a digital front door that lets clients self-refer, match with the right practitioner, and book in instantly. A system that ingests paper referrals and uses AI to structure them, without creating duplicates.

A workspace that gives clinicians AI-assisted notes, 120+ built-in assessments, and configurable pathways that reflect reality.

A leadership dashboard that tells you what’s happening now, not what happened six weeks ago.

A client portal that feels like the rest of their digital life: modern, intuitive, available in their language.

And a support model that aligns with your success.

You’re Not Alone, But You Do Have a Choice

If these ten problems sound familiar, it’s not because your service is failing. It’s because your tools are failing you.

The good news? Mental health doesn’t have to keep bending itself to fit generic systems. You can demand better.

At Tacklit, we’ve spent the last six years building an operating system for mental health: nothing else. Because we believe that when care teams have the right tools, clients get the right care.

Better systems. Better care. That’s the future.