There is chaos at the top of Headspace, a national youth mental health foundation.

The CEO of Headspace and five board members have resigned, amid reports of turmoil and insecurity within the vital health service.

A founding figure of Headspace, Australian of the Year Professor Patrick McGorry, insists Headspace has a promising future, but some workers disagree.

Headspace has provided mental health services to Australians aged between 12 and 25 for over ten years.

Professor McGorry, who also sits on the Headspace board, has confirmed that CEO Chris Tanti and five board members resigned this week.

He said the resignations must be seen in the “policy context”.

“Last November the Prime Minister and the Health Minister announced very sweeping changes to the way health services, and specifically mental health services, would be provided in Australia by the primary health networks,” Prof McGorry told ABC radio.

“That change, which came into effect on the 1st of July, would mean that Headspace's role as a national office, as a national organisation, would shrink very significantly.

“They wouldn't provide any programs anymore directly, and they would treat a much smaller accreditation, data and support role to the primary health networks and the centres themselves.

“And so a governance review was undertaken.”

But Professor McGorry did acknowledge some tension at Headspace.

“We've just seen a very big process of change and of course that does create tensions, you probably saw the outgoing CEO expressing some frustration during an election campaign in the media about this big change to headspaces role,” he said.

Reports say up to 13 staff have not had their contracts renewed, as well as the departure of half the board.

Matt Noffs, chief of the youth addiction service the Ted Noffs Foundation, said he was not surprised Headspace was in trouble.

“If you look back at the history of Headspace, the beginnings were truly exciting, there was a sense that there was going to be a partnership amongst different fields working together — but saying that there was a lot of money coming into this early on,” he said.

“As this project staled, the promise of a 100 centres and hundreds of dollars, that excitement quickly became a disappointment, as we saw Professor Hickie leave the board and confusion happen among the field as to what this organisation was actually doing.”

Mr Noffs said he had always questioned the announcement to build 100 Headspace centres.

“Why was this number picked out when normally when we do things in the field of mental health or drugs, you're thinking about what communities need, you're thinking about where the communities are, you're thinking about local needs, you're not thinking about it like how McDonalds would ... a cookie cutter sale approach fails.”