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 Home Campaigns Put Health First News
True state of mental health revealed21 October 2005The most comprehensive review of Australia's mental health system in 12 years has revealed the true shocking state of services. The report, Not For Service: Experiences of Injustice and Despair in Mental Health Care in Australia, was released in Canberra yesterday. It was compiled by the Mental Health Council of Australia, the Brain and Mind Research Institute in conjunction with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Tribunal. The secretary of the HSU No.2 branch in Victoria (Health and Community Services Union), Lloyd Williams, welcomed the report. "This report has clearly reinforced the view of our practitioners that mental health is regarded as a pseudo health problem, not a genuine one," Mr Williams said. "The report has underlined the problems of under-funding of services and the crisis-driven rather than preventative nature of services. "Our clinicians tell us the average length of stay in acute facilities is between 7 and 14 days, which is an indication of the serious state many people arrive in. "There are chronic bed shortages and very high clinician caseloads, so many people are discharged before they are properly well, and there is no time to deal with issues that are central to full recovery and rehabilitation on a long term basis. "Mental health is trivialised. Despite being 20% of the illness burden, mental health only receives between 7% and 8% of the health budget funding. "Mental health gets "pseudo funding" or band-aid funding because it is seen as a pseudo health problem." "It is indicative that last year the Victorian Government billed the State Budget as a Social Justice Budget increasing mental health funding in some areas, the implication being this was a one off "social justice issue", not an ongoing, serious health issue. "It is an attitude we believe is tokenistic and typical of the sorts of attitudes documented in the report. "Preventative health is a principle we have adopted in general health for decades but it isn't applied to mental health. "There is no time for early intervention. It's all about dealing with the high risk end." The conclusion in the Report that '...any person seeking mental health care runs the serious risk that his or her basic needs will be ignored, trivialised or neglected' is a scathing indictment of the system." "The final report has also reinforced the view we made in our own submission to this enquiry that under-funding has lead to unsafe workplaces for practitioners and a lack of support for those who provide the clinical services. "The report backs up our own research figures which say that 85% of practitioners will experience as assault in their workplace within a 12 month period." Contact Details Health Services Union of Australia hsu@hsu.net.au |
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© 2003 Health Services Union (HSU) |
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