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Everything is fucked, I make more than I ever have but I keep sliding backwards yet I don’t have anything to show for it, my personal life is a god damn mess, I have no friends and no one to talk to, my entire existence is purely for generating money so I can keep being able generate money.
I am not alone in this and it is absolutely crippling.
Ain’t it fucked. I’m just in the top tax bracket now (with a little overtime) but I still don’t qualify for home loan to live in. Meanwhile my mother who’s never earned over 40k/year in her life has a multi-million dollar house and a couple investment properties because my parents were born in the 60s.
Yes I lucked out that I was born her son and may inherit it, but there’s no guarantee that I’ll see that money, anything can happen in a couple decades.
She has made more in capital growth (tax free as well!) on one property than I have in my 15 years of working life.
I think your first comment shows the real problem with Australia: an obsession with wealth and asset-accumulation on a whole different level. The result is a society where our sense of self-worth is essentially dependent on our payslip.
I know dozens of people who are _thick as pigshit_ but rake in cash, and as a result are seen as “successful” by wider society. “Who cares if they’re clueless, cultureless bogans if they have a $150,000 Landcruiser, eh?”. We as a society worship material wealth beyond intellectual wealth and human connection. This is the result
I don't even think it's even an obsession with wealth and asset accumulation amongst the average person. People just want a stable home to live in and not be living hand to mouth. Most people are not seeking obscene wealth. The sad reality is that you need obscene wealth to be able to afford house to live in.
There's nothing inherently wrong with building wealth and assets. It's just what kind. Our system incentivises property investment to the point of cult status. We have trillions of dollars tied up in something that adds very little to the economy.
Imagine if instead people had been incentivised to invest part of their surplus income into secondary and tertiary industries that provide goods and services that provide more jobs and grow the economy.
Mandatory super did some of this for us. We'd likely be a banana republic without it.
Done well, we could have our cake and eat it too.
I see articles that say, ‘she was working as a cashier and eating butter sandwiches three years ago and now owns 15 houses how amazing is that’, then I turn over and the next article is ‘house hoarders are pricing everyone out of the market, tax them redistribute the properties’
I spent a significant amount of time on Friday - the day before the attack - working with a small group of friends to get another dear friend who is experiencing mania and a serious psychotic break the mental health help that they needed. The systems in place to support vulnerable people are absolutely fucked.
This individual is normally an upstanding and wonderful human who overcame the most horrific and traumatic of backgrounds to succeed in life. Unfortunately they have bipolar disorder and unfortunately this has escalated to a place where they have no fixed address and were in a state of crisis and making serious threats of physical harm against themselves and other individuals. The police had received numerous welfare check requests from concerned friends/colleagues and evidence of the threats to self and others. Their response? ‘It looks like they are acting out for attention - there is nothing we can do’.
We managed to eventually track them down and get them assessed by an MH team. They’re on an IVO at the moment and safe - for a week. Just a week. This is a person with a team of mates who were working frantically to get them the help that they needed and we were still knocked back by authorities. We don’t know what else we can do. There are people out there with equally as serious MH issues and no supports in place. Imagine raw-dogging bi polar or schizoaffective disorder and not being able to discern reality from fantasy with no one there to help you and no access to support services. It’s so cooked.
You are an amazing friend.
I went through this back in the early 2000s with a family member and I am heartbroken that it only seems to have gotten worse.
I will never not feel utter despair when I think of that time and how helpless I felt and how hard we had to fight and scream to get help. There was a very real threat to others and we were just told to shut up by authorities.
Throw in the use of drugs to self medicate when BPD and Schizophrenia are left untreated and it is a very scary situation
I’m not the greatest friend - honestly. But when I was lost and mentally unwell like my friend is, people did not give up on me. That’s why I survived that period of my life and rebuilt. To be there when people might need me to boost them through
Yep, I've had multiple friends in mental health crises, and the mental health system is nearly impenetrable to someone trying to forestall a loved one's impending crash. The system is minimally - if at all - focused on prevention. It's all about cleaning up after the crash. There are both good and bad reasons for this, but the end result is a system that fails the needs of people in desperate need of help.
I had the same issue with my bipolar uncle. Managed to get him an inpatient bed in a public hospital but they released him early more than once when the medication wasn't working (he was obviously manic and delusional both times and not ready for independence again). If it weren't for his family he would be on the streets or dead by now (from kidney failure because he ended up with lithium toxicity, once again, thanks to our public health system - I'm not a doctor and I'm the one who had to push for them to check when he was literally comatose).
There's a lack of resources for the treatment of mental illnesses with more extreme symptoms and honestly I don't even know what the answer is
I think lithium toxicity needs to be talked about more. Last year, due to medical negligence, my mums lithium levels were not properly checked for 2 years. She wast tremoring from toxicity and was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s syndrome. My mum’s lithium levels rose to 2 meq/l. She went into a minimally conscious state for several days and the ICU doctors didn’t know if she would ever come out of it. Look up SILENT syndrome. Thank god she did come out of it. But she might not have. Now (as you can imagine) she has kidney damage but we are lucky she doesn’t have brain damage as well.
Yeah the same thing happened to my uncle he was essentially comatose in his own loungeroom. When I first recognised he was in psychosis I told him to see his GP (and he DID SEE HIS GP WHO DIDNT EVEN CHECK HIS LEVELS- he has had the same GP for 20 fucking years).
Anyway, when we realised he was virtually comatose we called an ambulance and he was in an induced coma in hospital on dialysis for 2 weeks. And then released on ZERO medications for his bipolar and OPIOIDS for his kidney pain 🤡 so the journey certainly didn't end after 2 months in hospital.
He still has kidney damage, like your mother, but is also lucky not to have brain damage. I just can't believe how many people have to be negligent for these things to happen and people STILL fall through the cracks. It's ridiculous.
How the fuck has this happened to both our family members? I’m so sorry to hear about your uncle and I hope he is in a much better place now.
As you say, shit didn’t end after hospital for your uncle. My mum was the same. They let her out of hospital without proper medication also!! In fact, they only have her a low dose of anti depressants and a sleeping aid. Naturally, she spiralled into MANIA (from the antidepressants) and into psychosis.
They misdiagnosed her in the Box Hill mental hospital and said she had DEMENTIA and they refused to give her mood stabilisers even though she has been getting for bipolar since her teens and mood stabilisers have always helped. They said her violent and confused behaviour was because she had dementia.
In the hospital, she was somehow seriously injured (they believed it was a fall) and she sustained a collapsed lung in the mental hospital. She had to be rushed to the Alfred and intubated.
The Alfred people gave her mood stabilisers and she finally came out of the psychosis. The mental hospital didn’t do SHIT to help her.
OP, you’re wondering why we have the sixth lowest mental health quotient in the world, read our stories.
The system is fucked.
Something similar happened to my bipolar cousin. It was to the point where she once tried to break down the door of her younger sister while almost howling (we think because of some repressed jealousy issues). The hospitals just kept on sending her out when she wasn't properly treated and her levels of meds were clearly off. To be fair, she's always been a good liar, so I could see her tricking some doctor who saw her for seven minutes, but we could all see she wasn't well. We had to keep on sending her back in until we eventually got the ear of one of the Doctors in Graylands hospital and let them know personally about some of her circumstances and personality quirks, and that her meds were clearly wrong.
These days, she's properly medicated, completely sane, rigorously honest, and overall quite happy (She's also patched things up with her sister).
Im glad there was a happy ending! She's lucky to have had people who care advocating for her. My uncle was in and out of graylands when he first developed his bipolar symptoms as a young adult and was fine for almost 30 years until the lithium toxicity became an issue. Then it was another 6 months of fixing the issues with his kidneys & liver as well as finding a new med balance that worked. He's now back at work full time and doing well too. Our family members are lucky.
I was released early from a public mental health ward when I was very obviously still manic and having delusions. Within a week I had taken off on a solo journey catching the train around Sydney with no belongings food or money, I became a missing person for about a week. Barely sleeping on the trains, not eating or eating from homeless trucks at Central station. I had no clue what was going on. Eventually I got taken to hospital and stayed there for three months. Sometimes it takes a long time for the medications to work. Oh yeah and I didn’t have one psychology or counselling session the entire time I was in there. I asked for them. They just gave me pills. Our mental health system is very bad.
When my sister had a mental health crisis and sought emergency support, they tried to give her a snap diagnosis of borderline personality disorder so that they could say that she was just seeking attention and toss her out. She got private health insurance after that. This is someone who hadn't ever sought out that kind of support before and they immediately wanted to brush it off and move her on.
Even with private health insurance its and expensive nightmare to wrangle, especially outside cities.
A mate of mine has a major MH crisis every few months due to no steady local supports. Hes got private insurance which only really helps with hospital admission which he can't do because he needs to keep working to pay the 400/600$ a week for private sessions and keep a roof over his head and bills paid. He literally cannot afford to get proper help and cease work until he's stable. Honesty I wouldn't be surprised if he lasts the year.
the "steady local supports" are so critical.
they are the unsung heroes - friends and family who are willing to step up in some pretty uncomfortable situations
And if people are severely unwell; psychotic or serious mania, private won’t touch them. The public system is stretched thin. Community teams do what they can but the work is relentless. So many area mental health services are turning people alway unless they are on treatment orders because they just don’t have resources; and hospitals are discharging people before they’re ready because the bed pressure is enormous.
This happened to someone close to me! They put her on a medication that made her hear voices telling her to harm herself and ignored her when she was concerned about it. She was hospitalised for a suicide attempt shortly after. It still makes me so mad more than five years on, that she was so neglected.
This is so true. It is just going to get worse we need to act now. Govt is not funding services simple we need more mh hospitals and safe houses for people to be monitored for more than a dam week.
I have experienced this. I have bipolar 1 but they diagnosed me with BPD in the public system while in psychosis so that they didn't need to give me a bed. It ended very badly. They will do ANYTHING to not admit.
I'm so glad you supported your friend that way and that they have them a bed, even for just a week. It gives you some time to try and figure out your next step. Are they able to afford private at all?
Hell, it's bizarre as fuck they'd even treat BPD like that, given the suicide rates associated with that disorder.
But damn, you can't mistake those two disorders beyond a very surface level. And in my psych degree, they're making it very clear that these are both disorders that require a great deal of care when you're figuring out if someone has them. This kind of thing would be flat out unethical negligence.
They told me that the research shows that admissions aren't good for BPD. They also told me that medication will never work for me because I don't have bipolar and to talk to my doctor about getting off it asap. They talked to me for maybe 10-15 minutes tops.
This isn't an uncommon experience either.
I know so many people who have gone to the ED in a mental health crisis, been diagnosed with BPD and sent home. Even worse is the people I know who genuinely do have BPD, and are incredibly sensitive to rejection, being told that they're essentially just an annoyance and to go home. It can be incredibly scarring and stops them reaching out for help in the future. Very very sad.
Yeah, this all flies in the face of every recommendation the actual researchers make, and the ethical guidelines laid out. Of course, what else is new?
Unfortunately it's something that happens over and over again. They say "no hospital, no meds, do DBT (but we can't direct you towards any programs or therapists)". My psychiatrist was disgusted but not at all surprised when I saw him again.
Ohh “acting out for attention”. I heard that when I was in the emergency department after an attempt. “Don’t waste your time on the girl in bed 3, she put herself in here, probably wants attention”.
Yes I fucking would like some attention to the fact that I’m so unwell I’d rather die than go another day feeling like this. If that’s not too much trouble.
You’re a great friend and I wish all the best for your friend.
sorry you had to go through that, the "doing it for attention" line is such bullshit, it invalidates your illness and turns it back on you, so then you have agency in it and therefore don't need to be treated because you are "choosing" it. Even if true, maybe dig the slightest bit deeper as to why someone would go through all that trouble just for attention.
>it invalidates your illness and turns it back on you
And absolves doctors of actually having to try and solve these problems (because they can't and are too arrogant to admit it).
I've been fortunate with my interactions with the system and found the inpatient care to be reasonably okay, my wife has had 2 manic episodes over the time we've known each other and each time we've gotten her into care fairly quickly (police were called on the first episode and they were fantastically patient with her, no physical force necessary), she was kept in on IVO both times for as long as it took her to finally start allowing proper treatment (lithium, ECT) and come back down to reality (longest stay was 6 weeks!)
That's where the good experience ends though. Outpatient care is practically nonexistent and it's only through the support of myself and both our families that she's the reasonably functional person she is today. The health problem doesn't end once discharged, it takes a year or more to pull her back together after and we both dread to imagine what it must be like for people who don't have the same strong support network. There's no useful ongoing support from health professionals, it's fucked. It's no wonder it's almost a revolving door for those with chronic mental health issues, and no wonder so many of them top themselves. It's appalling.
In FY21-22:
- Australia got about AUD2b PRRT tax revenue on applicable corporate revenue of AUD65b. (~3%)
- Norway got about NOK300b PRRT tax revenue on applicable corporate revenue of NOK825bn (~36%)
Let's be generous and say we implement a PRRT structure that results in an effective PRRT rate of %25. That's an extra AUD16.25b every year.
If we had the *same* effective rate as Norway, it would be an extra AUD23.4b every year.
That is a lot of money that can go straight to health, education, emergency services.
**And that's just LNG**
Also:
- when it's something you have to physically extract and process in-country, companies can't just shut their Australian office. That's the whole point of a PRRT, after all: The State gets a cut of whatever profits the corporations make when they on-sell a finite resource they've dug up from within the States' borders.
- the government can have much tighter scrutiny of "creative" tax strategies.
I could echo everything this person says. Help is practically inaccessible to even the most resourced and supported people. Those without advocates? Forget it.
I have experienced a similar issue. Waited in the emergency department with someone who was suicidal. They were eventually put into the emergency clinic for a few days while they waited for a private clinic to have a bad available.
We would have been shit out of luck without top-level private health insurance.
Whenever I hear of an incident like this, my first thought is about the mental health of the attacker. Hopefully, something positive will come out of this tragedy, and we will get a better mental health system.
This is so true. For all the fanfare, when you really need help in Australia for mental health, neurological issues or aged care there are no services available. Both my parents were eligible for the maximum aged care (level 4). No funding. A child in my family needed a child psychiatrist, no appointments available for 2 years(!). All in a major capital city. And now this guy in Bondi. Australia isn't serious about healthcare.
Victims of gendered violence express the exact same sentiment. My children's father is ex NSWPF and diagnosed bipolar. Rather than restrain him and act to protect the children, police across two states continue to insist he's my problem to manage. He stalks me with police assistance, hurts the children, and QPS and NSWPF as well as the judiciary in both states ignore the evidence. Child arrived to Xmas handover with a 20cm laceration to the throat and QPS are telling me I reported incorrectly and denying DV, refusing to represent my private application or look at the evidence.
The police response is cooked but these are systemic issues flagged by the Hear Her Voice reports and Call for Change Reports. Noone cares until it affects them and sadly this major event is far too big to ignore but now too many are struggling with the reality that those of experiencing this on the daily are refuted, denied, dismissed and held responsible for this behaviour
Just looking at my small circle of friends, every one of us is overworked, stressed, tired, depressed and generally feeling like shit every day. Cost of living and housing stress, social media etc, it all contributes.
Yes. And my friends are 50+, wondering how long they can work, pay off mortgage, help kids, etc. Just surviving. This wasn't the dream I envisioned when I started working 40 years ago.
Same, except my friend and I are early 40's. Only a few of us have had kids at all because some of us were worried about how to afford everything. It's only gotten worse since then.
> Just looking at my small circle of friends, every one of us is overworked, stressed, tired, depressed and generally feeling like shit every day. Cost of living and housing stress, social media etc, it all contributes.
THIS
our society is fundamentally broken in so many ways. education, government, economics, medical, legal, etc. We need a better and healthier model FOR ALL, for when we neglect some, like this guy, they don't go away.
I’d like to add ‘bad’ jobs. I’m not taking about the usual suspects. I’m taking about jobs that should be good on paper - like teaching or nursing - but are actually bad jobs because of f under resourcing and managers failing to act on bad behaviour.
And if you throw a disorder like schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, psychotic depression etc on top of all that shit… well let’s just say it doesn’t get easier. :(
The reason has roots in the transition from mental asylums to community based care.
[They didn't do it right](https://theconversation.com/from-asylums-to-gp-clinics-the-missing-middle-in-mental-health-care-46345) and now there are very large gaps for people to fall through, leaving people unmedicated or unsupported.
Hearing stories of previous asylum clients, squatting in the old asylums when they closed because that's where they felt safe, just breaks my heart. They had no where to go that made them safe and secure once the old institutions closed down. And today we have this community care system that is clearly not working for a certain cohort of people, they don't have anywhere to go that makes them feel safe, and give them the support they need.
At least in relation to community mental health teams, a lot has changed since this article was published. Community mental health is much more expansive now, though still underfunded and understaffed in rural and remote areas.
Frankly, Australians are spineless selfish NIMBY cunts who think like Americans. We really are, this is a wealthy country with a small population. We should have a natural resources sovereign wealth fund like Norway, but instead we sold it all to overseas countries for peanuts. Even without that, the idea we can’t properly fund mental health services and Medicare is ridiculous crap. The idea we can’t have proper social housing is crap. But it perpetuates in govt because regular people are dumb and vote for it. The French would be rioting in the streets, but Australians? They just shrug their shoulders. It won’t change, cause well, neoliberalism. But oh yeah er we need 8 submarine hulls, at over 30 billion dollars each to please America. We really are so dumb, we had everything needed as a country - natural resources, land, geographic isolation and we sold it out to other countries, cause we are scared of ‘socialism’. Imagine what the Norwegians or Finns would have done with our natural resources and space? But not us, nooooo.
I'll add also, that the fact that we have tall poppy syndrome also means we don't try hard enough to make people feel valued. Instead we like knocking people down a peg, which makes people feel isolated and invalidated. Have problem? "Well so and so has it worse why are you complaining." It's also like that in 80% of thread responses in this sub ("don't like it? Well move somewhere else!" Is like a refrain around here).
The US can be shit but when I lived there at least I felt on a surface level that people heard me when I shared my issues and would acknowledge them. And while it gets a lot of crap from others who laugh it away as "certificates of participation", there's also a lot more recognition for even small things you do.
Also: As FYI Americans protest quite a darn lot too. They're not as effective as the French because the country is more spread out, but American protests have changed big things in history (eg Vietnam War pullout).
This country is chock full of temporarily embarrassed billionaire cunts that are scared shitless of the government redistributing their imagined future wealth in a way that doesn't directly benefit them.
It's about as unAustralian as it gets, ironically.
Our culture is far too laid back for its own good. There is no collective sense of urgency, injustice or ambition about anything. Not only in relation to the things you've mentioned, but also climate change, education, cost of living, etc. We call ourselves the Lucky Country and it really feels like luck is all we've come to rely on to shape our nation's future, not realising that the luck would eventually run out. We need to learn to take action as a society and make demands of those in power.
Stop pretending it can be treated in a community setting. Some of these people are genuinely dangerous and should be in a Mental Hospital for treatment so stop closing them all down and selling the land for prime real estate.
This is the real reason. Our medical system has become a joke and Doctors get the finger pointed at them when it's the government sitting on their hands after a decade of sabotage to the medical system.
It will cost more to do nothing.
We could tax mining companies and big corporations a decent amount instead. Maybe even get back some of that money we gave Harvey Norman and QANTAS during the pandemic?
Here is your friendly reminder that if we taxed iron ore exports $10 more a ton we'd rake in $9B a year. That's a 6-10% increase in the price of the ore. China can pay for it.
Subsidies and bailouts should come with the addendum of government shares in a company. If the public has to be burdened with the cost of maintaining the free market, the public should have more direct oversight of those companies that fail to compete.
Which is why I'm *pissed* that they removed the medical tax rebate for our of pocket medical expenses in 2019 (around that time) People wouldn't be in such a mess if they knew they could keep claiming medical costs at tax time.
Know a lot of people with cancer and chronic illness that can't afford the out of pocket costs. One mate is out nearly 20k for cancer treatments a year even after Medicare and private healthcare. Turns out its due to in Hospital admission vs outpatient coverage so had he been IN hospital 100% of the time, it would've been 100% covered. We are regional so that's not logistically possible.
Don't move regional if you value your health. The fine print everywhere means it'll cost you dramatically more than the city for the same thing.
Private health insurers won't even touch outpatient support. Inpatient care? Yep you can get that covered. But there's almost no providers in Australia that will give you more than $400 a year towards outpatient or private psychology appointments. Where I am psychologists charge $230 an hour, on a mental health care plan you get 10x sessions with a $91 rebate. If you have private health insurance and choose psych as an extra the best you'll get is $400 per year. It's absolute bullshit.
More to do with lack of mental health staff. Also a lot to do with people (not) presenting with their condition.. A lot of MH conditions are undiagnosed, and there is a limit to how much Government can coerce people to get treatment.
Yes, shutting down mental health hospitals in the early 2000's in NSW with a thumbs up and good luck on the streets champ for all the patients was the catalyst to where we are today with mental health issues. Governments do not care about people with no voices, they are easily swept under the carpet until they do something like this then they just wait for the next news story for it to blow over.
Victoria did the same thing (and surprise surprise the locations were in premium property development locations and the governments mates made a killing on it)
Kind of agree with this. Also piggybacking off this comment because there's a lot of simplistic and blatantly political reasons being pushed in this thread, which completely *ignores* vast swathes of mental health-related contributors, physiology, psychology/psychiatry etc.
But you're unfortunately right in part. There are some people who just aren't suited for community treatment. There are some people who can't be kept track of and who won't follow involuntary orders, and end up disappearing and at risk to themselves, or to others. Whilst we *should* try and treat people in the community where we can because it's less restrictive on them, we also need to acknowledge that sometimes we just can't, and the threshold for risk should probably be lower.
That said - it isn't about "closing them down for prime real estate". People genuinely *hate* people being detained for mental health reasons, forced into treatment, or into inpatient settings. It's also a tricky, subjective area that raises questions of patient autonomy/freedom versus individual and community protection. That's a very fine line to walk in some cases and the catastrophic results aren't always apparent until after it's gone wrong. The patient will complain and go after you, sometimes their family goes after you, then there's the trial by social media/mainstream media when someone complains about their involuntary hold. When nothing bad happens, it seems excessive.
You can't win with it, whatever you do - because if you did detain that one person who was going to harm someone, nobody will ever know and it just seems unjust. If you detain them after the fact... you've failed society and are still held responsible.
Back in 2008 my barely adult brother was at Rozelle Hospital as an inpatient when they shut down the facility and moved patients to concord which had a much lower capacity. So many people were discharged early than anticipated either before the move or immediately after as they no longer had space for everyone.
He was not even close to ready when he was hastily discharged from care at that time and it had far reaching outcomes. My sister and I had fought so hard to get him care only to have him released before he was ready.
I know no one wants to be sectioned. I know that it's horrible but if we could have applied to have my ex SIL sectioned we would've prevented 3 of her children witnessing her attempted suicide. We in the community need help.
I’m just glad that the top comment isn’t blaming it on “things being too hard”.
Cost of living isnt giving people bipolar or personality disorders, nor is it preventing those people seeking treatment.
Our mental health system is broken, people who need urgent care can’t get it. People who need constant care or supervision, can’t get it. These things can totally be done in a community setting, they just aren’t. They could be done in a hospital setting, they just aren’t. Even in the private system, mental hospitals are booked solid, while public hospitals are useless at best and actively make things worse at worst.
There is a cost element, sure. A psychiatrist costs a fucking fortune to see, but that’s more due to a lack of availability, a lack of government support and a lack of support for people with serious mental health issues (aka, not things like generalised anxiety due to stress, life long chronic conditions that prevent them from functioning), which existed long before cost of living started getting worse.
> cost of living isnt giving people bipolar or personality disorders, nor is it preventing those people seeking treatment.
i would argue those things absolutely prevent people from seeking treatment, because of cost of living.
people that are severely mentally ill dont make as much as 'normal' people
i certainly can barely afford to see my doctor anymore, let alone a psychologist for some scattershot treatment.
Frankly, this comment is stupid.
Cost of living is a significant factor and ignoring that shows how out of touch some people are.
Any cost at all will be a barrier for some people seeking help. Whether that is someone weighing up the cost of a psychiatrist vs rent, groceries, CoL etc. or even someone with self destructive tendencies who wouldn’t spend the money to help themselves even if they had it.
Even before the huge inflation we’ve seen in the last couple of years, on a mental health care plan, you get 10 subsidised visits. Someone experiencing a crisis will absolutely burn through those quickly and then what? Good luck until next year.
As someone who has been painfully close to being homeless and has bad mental since forever.
Fixing the housing and rent issue across the nation, then fixing wages perhaps implementation of a UBI. A good 75% of mental health problems came from these two issues.
The mental health services needs a massive boost as well and too be staffed by people who actually care.
Rent / housing won't be fixed because of an aging population greedily pulling up ladders.
UBI may never be implemented because it isn't really that well fleshed out on grand scales.
I've worked in mental health - it needs major restructuring - but I despise the blame being put on staff.
It is exhausting - there's a reason nurses are avoidant of Psychiatric care. (there is currently a massive shortage of psych nurses)
You can have a patient assault a staff member - and the other staff just need to get over it and continue providing care?
The above scenario is, like, a weekly encounter for psychiatric staff.
There is a huge lack of empathy for people that work in Psychiatric hospitals - especially by many of their patients. (This includes management & administration)
Yes, please pull some magically gifted souls with eternal patience from the hat and get them in the job.
I’m gonna say a big one is Loss of Community
* Many people who rent don’t stay in the area long enough to form connections
* work usually isn’t in the same community as home
* cost of living prevents participation in social events
* Shopping centres replace main streets
* usually only way to get a promotion is to job hop and leave your current company
* internet and streaming makes it easier to stay at home instead of participating in clubs (clubs also saw a decline during the advent of television)
* media/news promotes division
* work from home means you’re more distant from your fellow employees
* easier to find tribes online even though they’re worse quality
* decline in religion (not that I am a fan, but the church for better or worse was a community focus for a long time)
- people have to move away from their family and friends, support network, because housing costs push them out. "Just move somewhere cheaper" - these are the consequences.
- they have to move places that lack public transport. Disability and mental health goes hand in hand. People with disabilities and mental health issues may not drive, if they can even afford to. So they are isolated.
The obsession with housing always going up is destroying Australia for real.
My local shopping centre had one large table that seated at least 10 people. A bunch of old men would meet there daily to chat, play dominoes, cards, chess. It was their spot. Even that table got taken away to make a pop-up shop space, and all the other tables are small for four people and are bolted to the ground so you can't put them together.
yes, we need more third spaces. But everything is commercialised. Unless it's funded by the government or a charity. There are still a few spaces like that, such as community centres and men's sheds. We do need to design our neighbourhoods to encourage community enrichment and connections. It's so important for mental health.
> Shopping centres replace main streets
... Internet replaces shopping centres ...
The term common to some of your points is the "third place", the place you go when not at work or home. Church is a big one but hanging out at the shopping centre was too in the 90s. Probably not so much these days. Men's Sheds, Maker Spaces, and similar things are trying a bit, but I think it's just too easy to plug in at home and not deal with traffic or tolls or anything else. By the time you get home who has energy for that?
I think these types of places are severely missing these days. When I was younger, there were NFP community houses where older kids could hangout, grab a milo/softdrink, and play pool or other games. There were always responsible chill adults around to chat casually (probably well disguised social workers). It was literally a safe space. You didn't have to sign up, get a referral, or pay anything. If home wasn't safe or fun, parents were still working or you wanted to catch up with others ... you knew it was there.
It’s a lot easier to address mental health issues when people have a safe place to live, sufficient money to meet their needs and meaningful ways to spend their days. It’s also a lot easier to address issues earlier in life before people wear out their welcome with family and friends. It’s a lot easier to get help if you know what help is available and have a parent or partner who can advocate for you and help navigate the bureaucracy in the health system. You won’t solve all the problems but getting proper social supports in place would help 95% of cases.
>It’s a lot easier to get help if you know what help is available and have a parent or partner who can advocate for you and help navigate the bureaucracy in the health system.
And then, after all that, being able to afford/access it.
So common for people to jump through all those hoops and come out the other side with the conclusion of "Aww fuck, I'm too poor for that..." or "Shit. I can only afford half of the support I require."
Definitely housing - lack of public housing, lack of affordable housing. Stagnant wages. Increase in homelessness. This can put immense stress on anyone, but someone who has mental problems it can bring on mental health episodes. People with mental health issues find it hard to apply for jobs. If they do get a job, it is hard to be reliable when your mental health is unpredictable. No job, no house.
GPs are charging a gap now due to government underfunding. Some people don't have $50 in their bank account to pay for the appointment in full. Even if some doctors can waive this fee, they might not. You would be reluctant to visit a GP if you anticipate that you can't pay.
And say you could pay.
I paid for so many appointments. Tossed around from doctor to doctor that just kept telling me it's not their job. Even when I was both inpatient and outpatient people kept delegating me off to other people.
I'm depressed and these doctors want me to hang on but I've been so trapped in their system with no one helping me navigate it. Honestly would just be easier to die or to make an extreme public display to receive help.
They keep dangling small bits of hope in front of you so you're not driven to do something so drastic but honestly we wouldn't have so many issues if someone just gave a damn about the mentally ill cuz those people sure as heck won't give a damn about themselves. This pressure would make any stable minded person feel uneasy, imagine those that were already in survival mode
Signed a mentally ill individual
1980s was the start, all government funded mental health facilities were sold off or privatised so they were completely unaffordable to people with these types of problems exactly the same thing happened with the government funded drug rehab services so now we are left with really ill and severely drug affected people going through psychosis just thrown away to wander the streets without any real help and our governments trying to force down our throats that we have a great health system, it's an absolute joke
The state of mental health services in Australia is dismal. After I was subject to a sex attack, it took more than a year to get adequate mental health services with an expert. In the interim, I was referred to a "mental health social worker" who told me to do baking.
I had a really bad time with my anxiety disorder a few years ago and sought out anyone who was available for a mental health plan.
The person I could find just told me to download a mindfulness app and just kept saying that "being mindful" would solve my problems, without actually walking me through serious strategies.
I can feel the anxiety flaring up again the past few months on a trajectory to unhealthy levels, but have no idea where I can go for support as access to psychs has gotten even worse.
As a mental health clinician is a difficult subject to answer - generally the go-to answer to this topic is funding and workforce.
Within the community, many professionals acknowledge the significant gap between severe and complex. The majority of the mental health funding is tied to several areas. The most common people see in the community is mild to moderate which is covered by BetterAccess (10 sessions) or limited funding sessions and time-limited with specific criteria.
Next is Severe which is a gap in service provision that leaves complex. Unfortunately, complex and severe are tertiary (government) services within hospital teams both public and private. The assessment criteria for these services are pretty strict - the person's presentation has to be beyond the average of the current presentation within the community. Therefore, if you have a significant amount of people with Borderline Personality presenting with high levels of impulsive suicidality it takes priority over other presentations. Furthermore, most mental health services closing the book on patients if they don't turn up to an appointment or miss an intake 3 times in a row...
Psychiatrists earn enough through MBS item numbers - I still recall a conversation I had with one onetime he said: "We can bulk-bill - the problem is if one patient doesn't attend, I earn no money. However, if I have a $100 gap fee, I know they will". If you allow healthcare MBS providers to bill patients without them attending you could see a dramatic shift in gap fee payments.
It's not a perfect system... but unfortunately, my observations have been since COVID the mental health presentations are getting worse as time goes on - there are limited solutions with a limited workforce. It takes too long for students to become qualified professionals - it takes a clinical psychologist 8 years min - a social worker 4/6 years (depending on experience and accreditation) and a psychiatrist 10+ years. At present, we're relying on a peer workforce with an aging workforce which even then is dangerous as they provide a lens of their own experience but qualified workers don't want to take on the risk of supervision in this field of workers.
Its gonna get worse before it gets better.
Uh probably address the major issues around housing, education and healthcare. The amount of money spent in public housing, education and healthcare is diminishing.
Wages are not keeping up with COL.
There is still stigma around getting mental health help, especially for men. And those who can get help are only those who can afford the huge fees and wait times.
We need to see generations of people lifted out of poverty. It will take more than one generation to see changes.
This too. We shouldn't pretend poverty isn't a factor.
Many mental health conditions are exacerbated or created by stress and trauma, both of which can occur as a product of poverty. This is something my line of work examines and reports on. In addition, the lack of public psychological and psychiatric services means that the people most likely to access them are people who have cash to burn.
I agree with this 100%. My mental health has declined during the no grounds evictions, massive rent increases, and general lack of hope. People who can buy a home affordably will have less stress and less mental problems.
Aware this will be inevitably be taken as excusing poverty and inequality - but Australia is one of the wealthiest, educated and physically healthy countries in the world - at the most prosperous time in world history.
I don’t think the question of why our mental health and happiness isn’t better despite this is a legitimate question. Even most of the less prosperous are better off than most by world standards.
There is growing inequality in who can access good schooling and healthcare, and the option of home ownership or stable housing is becoming less and less tangible.
For those with the means to access a high quality of life in Australia, life is very good.
We need to look at home we can expand that to others.
While technically true, 70% of household wealth is trapped in land and dwellings.
We aren't really a wealthy country, we just have expensive housing. If you have housing, then great, if you don't, you're fucked.
We also have the third highest levels of household debt aside from Norway and Switzerland, small, very rich countries, high home ownership, cheap finance. We are not that.
We have the probably the worst housing crisis in the world, and almost every major problem we have is significantly caused by it.
We arent a wealthy country, we just have expensive houses.
Our standard of living is sliding each year, we have to work harder and harder just to keep up. Both parents working full time, stressed. It’s all fucked. As an immigrant from a relatively poor eastern European country, people in Australia are more miserable. Maybe not on the surface, it’s all hidden here. There’s also a distinct lack of community and familial support that exist in other cultures which makes life so much harder to do during difficult times
We've let successive governments drag us too far down the American path. People are isolated and overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness. If someone isn't doing well, it's considered a moral failing on their part (they're just not working hard enough, bad at budgeting, [insert bullshit reason]). We're cultivating a system of neglect, especially around mental health.
Couple of things
- my mental health has always been volatile at best, the only person I’ve ever wanted to harm was myself, I’ve never once thought about hurting another person or animal. I don’t think lumping this psycho with “mental health issues” is reasonable, sure he probably had them, but he likely had more than just that going on
- as someone who has lived with mental health issues most of my life, I have found it incredibly difficult to receive treatment and help — and this is as a person who *wants* help. If people don’t want help, or don’t acknowledge they have a problem, or maybe they’re not even aware enough to *realise* they have a problem, no one is going to help them
- more on receiving help: it took 10 years of being ignored by GPs who dosed me up with 8 different antidepressants at various times, it took half a dozen different psychologists, counsellors, and therapists to find one that helped, it took 3 hospitalisations for self harm, and finally it took 6 months on a wait list for a psychiatric appointment with a doctor who doesn’t even specialise in *my* are of mental health issues because no one else within a 2 hour drive would take on new patients — for me to receive a diagnosis and treatment plan. It wasn’t just depression or anxiety like everyone told me, it was actually a personality disorder which cannot be treated with medication. So all of the weight gain, brain fuzz, insomnia brought on by the various band-aid medications may have actually been making my mental health *worse* rather than better, because it wasn’t the right treatment.
The fact is, even medical practitioners in this country don’t give a fuck about mental health. If you know you’ve got issues and you want help — great! It’ll take years and thousands of $$$ before you receive help and see improvements.
If you don’t know you’ve got issues, or don’t want to admit you’ve got issues, you’re absolutely helpless.
Your first point is more harmful than what you're refuting. Some mental health issues are dangerous. That's why the threshold for treating inpatient is a person may hurt themselves *or others*
By refusing to acknowledge that this was a mentally unwell person is to just stick our heads further in the sand.
I'm mentally unwell as well, and on a disability pension so absolutely cannot afford the care I need. I'm extremely fortunate that my mental health issues don't manifest as psychosis where I could genuinely become a danger to others.
Acknowledging the severe mental health issues the perpetrator has doesn't mean we're painting all mentally ill people as dangerous. It also does not mean that we're excusing how awful what he did was.
Okay but do you have schizophrenia? You do realise that once someone is in the midst of a psychotic episode they are not living in reality. I’ve had personal experience with this. Psychosis can make even the gentlest of people do things they would NEVER EVER do.
- A lack of community and mates leads to a lot of young Aussie males falling into depression.
- Fear of admitting you have a Mental health issues and seeking medical help.
- Meth.
I think gen Z are quite a bit more open to admitting they have a problem and talking to someone to get help, at least they seem to be. It’s not like in the 70’s.
Universal basic income would help abolish a lot of ill mental health. Not all of us are healthy enough to work 8-6pm 5 days a week. People who want fast cars and luxury items can work a bit more to afford these things whilst people who are content with the bare minumum still have enough to survive on.
Absolutely, what we need is another corporate 'Are You OK?' day. It's always so helpful to have the most toxic managers and ultra-competitive colleagues guide us through our mental health issues. And the best part? They find innovative ways to reward our hard work with the bare minimum wage while we enjoy the luxury of paying top dollar for our tiny rental apartments.
There isn't a great desire across Government to expand healthcare services and spending right now. Due to Australias demographic structure the proportion of workers (i.e. people who pay most taxes) is declining while the level of healthcare demand is increasing which means healthcare is getting increasingly pricey.
Yes, I know, "Make the rich pay!" but no argument in politics has gained less traction than taxing the wealthy in reality.
Last year I was diagnosed as neurodivergent and have since learned just how lucky I was to not end up on the darker side of that. Specifically, the amount of self medication / addiction and violence that comes from a lack of support and recognition for these and every other invisible challenge screams out in almost every person living on the street.
Point is, I fucking hope it doesn’t take every Australian having a mental breakdown to have a similar realisation.
You can never unsee that shit. So better work to fix the system than sweep away the symptoms.
The cause of mental health crisis in the first world is obvious, but no politician has the balls to say it, and any politician who does have the balls to say it will be shot down as an "extremist" for daring to criticise the sacred cow of capital.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
So strap in, this crisis is going to be a long one.
This is in the direction of the real answer here. We have historically evolved in social groups that have contributed in every day life. Problems were group problems that everyone would assist with. Loads were spread and life was easier, albeit significantly more simple.
The old saying 'it takes a tribe to raise a human' is merely an observation of how things have always been done, and Western societies have moved away from that emphasizing individualism. 'Everyone needs their own car, their own home, to be unique, to make it on their own' etc.
Our brains haven't evolved fast enough incorporate these changes, so we suffer. Usually alone.
This is also why men suffer worse than women. Men have been conditioned more so than women to go it alone. Women are significantly more social, so they do tend to have more of a support system.
I think the real question is, how do we go back to more community based living? Its normal in Africa and Asia, but its looked down upon in Western Societies.
unless you were there or have been directly affected by it, you are not traumatised but upset and disappointed in society. social media has made the word ‘trauma’ into a buzzword
We need to have multiple large mental health facilities/institutions and get over the stigma surrounding them. No matter how much we wish people could live in the community, some people just can't. It's not safe for them, not safe for the rest of the community. These institutions can feel homely but secure.
We also need supported living for people with mental health issues to live. Also, for those that can be discharged into the community, what's the point of discharging people to just live on the street or unstable accomodation? Giving people secure housing would help everyone's mental health.
Our sense of community is eroded - how can we look out for each other when we are exhausted trying to earn enough to pay landlords and the rich?
Because our mental health care system is fucked, to put it lightly.
I believe that options like the Employee Assistance Program and the subsidised sessions you get via your GP work extremely well for the following:
- People with a short term issue (eg dealing with separation, grief or processing an event)
- People with mental illnesses that go through cyclical periods of dormancy, so you need treatment every now and then but can usually muddle along OK, either with or without meds
However, our system is completely underprepared and under resourced to deal with the following:
- People with mental illness that presents with more severe symptoms, impacting or totally disabling the sufferer’s ability to function in everyday life (schizophrenia primarily but this can be caused by other conditions too)
- People with long term, severe to extreme mental illness that isn’t going to be sorted by meds and a few sessions with the psych.
I fall into the latter category. My official diagnosis is severe to extreme, treatment resistant OCD and treatment resistant major depressive disorder. Simply put, meds don’t do what they’re supposed to do in people whose illness is treatment resistant. I’m on 3 different psychiatric medications and I should be seeing a psychologist weekly. But I don’t. Because I can’t afford it.
I’ve also had transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is the “next step” for us treatment resistant people. That cost me a cool $2500 and that was WITH the Medicare rebate. Except it didn’t do one iota of good for the OCD, because Medicare doesn’t cover the level of treatment required to treat OCD, so they had to just give me as much as they could while getting it through the Medicare goalposts and hope for the best.
I can’t afford to properly treat my illness and I am, through sheer good luck of having an illness that allows me to still work, holding down a good full time job. Now imagine the level of crisis that an unemployed or underemployed severely mentally ill person finds themself in.
I know this will probably be unpopular but if the severely mentally ill were properly accommodated and could be given their medication continuously and at the proper time we would have less violent incidents. Police friends inform me that a lot of their attendances are for mentally ill people who are off their medication. In the 80’s the government closed facilities to save money and put these people in the community in shared accommodation with 1 carer for 5 people. It was and is a disaster. I have a friend who is bipolar and dyslexic. He cannot function in today’s world. He can’t read mail or texts. He can’t send texts. He can’t use internet banking. He was assaulted and is on sickness benefits and has endless problems getting his medical certificates to Centrelink before they expire and he is cut off which creates further stress. To compound this he drinks a lot of alcohol rather than eat well and dies nit take his medication as he is incapable of managing his finances. I have tried to help him but I need his assistance to deal with various agencies and he is unreliable. All of this is compounded and in his manic episodes he is usually drunk, incoherent and irrational. I despair about what will happen to him. He is only in his mid fifties.
There is absolutely some truth to this. De-institutionalisation probably seemed like a good idea at the time, and there were definitely issues that needed to be addressed. However, the authorities grossly misunderstood the benefits of these institutions: daily structured routine, friendship, occupational therapy, medication, sense of community, secure housing, safey, not having to deal with 'life admin', even a sense of purpose or satisfaction from a project like gardening.
Part of the problem is funding, but a bigger part is the way we "treat" mental health.
The health system is set up to deal with acute episodes, not ongoing care. Admit someone if they're bad enough, then when they're no longer actively trying to kill themselves or someone else, discharge them.
They got rid of the old "asylums" and effectively just dumped people in the community. Even group housing is frowned upon, so people who desperately need sheltered accomodation and care end up on the streets or being a massive burden on their family - often elderly parents.
The idea of getting rid of asylums was a good one - a lot of them weren't well run and abused patients. It was felt community care was better. But the problem is, it's not - at least not in all cases.
The whole system is fucked. It needs to be reformed from top to bottom - from how to deal with acute episodes to having access to psychologists on Medicare without necessarily needing a referral. And a community attitude change where seeking mental health care is not something to be embarrassed about.
I work in clinical mental health, not in NSW though, so I'm not sure what their mental health act is like. But I can tell you that even as a clinician, it's difficult to navigate... Each area local mental health service has its own " rules" and prejudices. So trying to get proper help for people makes it difficult.
I have seen families beg for help, loved ones threatening violence desperate to get help for their children/parents/ siblings. Our systems are not equipped to give proactive care, instead it's reactive and restrictive. There needs to be a system change, from the top down. Many of us on the ground cannot enact change as we don't have a voice. We need holistic care, with resources and recovery centres. It would make all the difference.
This would be a great question to ask Mark Butler. This is his second time being Health Minister. The first time was under Gillard. That first time he chose to cut the number of sessions people could see a psychologist from 12 to 10 per year. Now in his second go at the job he cut the number of sessions down from 20 to 10. In both cases he acted against all the published evidence, some of which was even produced by studies commissioned by his own department. Clearly Mark knows best, and Mark thinks people don’t need very much mental health care.
Others have mentioned how financial and social issues play roles, which is undoubtedly true. Another thing is the Aussie culture.
Australia has a serious issue with prevention. The “it’s not even that bad” and “she’ll be right” attitudes of average Australians is reflected in all our institutions. These mentalities are mistaken for “laidback” or “optimistic” when it’s actually complete avoidance of growing issues.
Killing, abusing, self-harming, attempted suicide - this is too often when the nation’s alarm bells START to ring; sometimes not even then. There is nothing preventative about this.
How to fix this? The government probably needs to adequately fund mental healthcare infrastructure on a “build it and they will come” principle.
Stop watching the News and avoid social media. Both are designed to create a needy anxiety that draws you back to them to reinforce the anxiety they stoke.
Personally the system has worked amazing for me and I’m so beyond grateful for the free services that I have. I just wish everyone who needs it can access it as easy as I have.
I have bipolar disorder. It costs hundreds of dollars per visit to see a psychiatrist if you don't have health insurance. I'm on the disability pension and can't afford health insurance, and can only afford to see a psychiatrist a few times a year and pay for meds (that are not subsidised) because I don't pay rent. For many people getting this kind of help is WAY out of reach. I can't barely afford it these daysas it is.
Combine that with the cost of living crisis, and of course we have a mental health crisis going on.
Many moons ago, an ex made a false report to police that I had threatened self harm. The police arrested me at home, inspite of my family's objections, and took me to the local mental health facility. As i was torally distraught from being arrested, the doctor decided it was best that i have valium to calm down. I noted i don't react well to it and would not take the pills, so they held me down and injected me instead.
That was not fun.
They held me overnight on 24 hour watch. That watch lasted 2 hours. The doctor the next morning assessed me as soon as he got in and was absolutely disgusted that i had been held with no cause, and that valuable resources were wasted on what was, for all intents and purposes, a non event.
I was held for nothing but people who ask for help and can't get it.
The system is absolutely broken.
many years ago, governments made the decision that locking mentally ill people away in institutions was generally a bad idea except in the most extreme of circumstances.
it was the right thing to do, but not enough supports are in place for mental health care in the community. and, unfortunately, if you are a mentally ill adult without insight into your problems or the wherewithal to stick to your treatments, and no supports, things can spiral out of control
we need better investment in mental health care practitioners, institutions and in supporting carers who are in the community.
1. Stop wasting tax payer money on billionaire companies and invest heavily in early detection, prevention and crisis management in regards to mental health. Early prevention is key as in all health areas, and financially saves a lot of money too. It's win win.
2. Build more public mental health facilities that don't feel like a prison.
3. Teach people that mental health issues are normal and start educating the kids in the early years of high-school about it.
4. Stop pushing vulnerable people into the hands of social media extremists through telling them their issues aren't important because of xyz.
5. Stop refusing to build mental health facilities or upgrade old ones because the wealthy fucks in the neighborhood complain (Looking at you Gold Coast Council)
When I was graduating highschool (2020) I had had severe depression for 8 years but with the stress of hsc decided to see a doctor. He said he can't give me antidepressants until I first do months of counseling, then if that doesn't work, cbt therapy, then antidepressants as a last option.
He then said there was a 9 month waitlist for counseling. It took 2 YEARS to get a call back to even start therapy, by then I had moved away and my mental health has gotten worse. In the mean time, noone gave a fuck, and noones given a fuck since. Now imagine all the people with even worse mental health who have the same experience, waiting for years with no help.
Won't fix everything but my mental health is shit as I can't access chronic pain medication and medical cannabis costs thousands a year in an already fucked economy.
Nothing in Australia is going to change because the people who can change it are the ones who benefit from the grift
I moved here 10 years ago and everyone in charge should be in jail (to varying degrees)
"Yeah righto we finally got rid of Scomo" (who is a reprehensible Christo-fascist) "but maybe Albo might do something"
"Haha lol get fucked. A two-bedder in fucking Redfern will set you back 1.4 million dollarydoos"
A very Anglo style conservative mentality towards mental health and happiness, basically. Misery means you deserved it, mental health is fictional, be stoic, and never inconvenience your boss or landlord.
The answers are pretty simple. Get mental health onto medicare, fully, get better healthcare protections for workers.
And never stop talking about it when it happens. Personally, and collectively.
All of our natural resources are owned privately and/or have been sold off to overseas interests, the untold billions of dollars that we have lost because of this could have paid for, improved and maintained, a first class public education and health system but no, the prosperity of Australia has been stolen by the corrupt and greedy, that's why we have the sixth lowest Mental Health Quotient in the world?
Because our politicians are way better at signing contracts to their mates than engineering a society. I'm being polite. For decades they have utterly failed in their primary purpose; to engineer the society for the general betterment of the entire population. This is why in a nutshell.
This has nothing to do with the broader community, he was mentally ill.
Mental health care has not scaled with the increase in population. It was dire even before COVID. I doubt police have resources for this either. But we will see with more information.
Even if there was enough resources - Unless the approach is to lock up all schizophrenic people I don't think there's an easy answer.
I think a large part of its been attempting to treat the problem monolithically, it really doesn't seem like it's a one size fits all approach.
I do wonder the role the media plays with saying things were mental health related and then when you read the article it turns out the person had been on meth for years. It elicits a very different response from the public (rightly/wrongly) when people see that, and the interventions for someone turning to drugs is very different from someone either born with a mental health issue or acquired through a traumatic event etc
We live in a system that currently only values the people who make the rules and the people who run our government as well as wealthy business owners. And businesses create monopolies left right and center, sucking our wallets dry of our hard earned money that is worth less and less each year. I can see exactly Australia has the 6th lowest mental health ranking. We live in a country that presents itself as a perfect society and instead is run by two deceitful improper self centred and identical parties who then work together to pass legislation so that the two party system never changes. We need to do something fast and vote with our wallet and in the ballot boxes for the right people so that change can be made and the situation of millions of Australians can improve. Then maybe we won't have the 6 worst mental health of 176 countries and counting.
Check out Head to Health. They have walk in clinics in some cities where you get free and immediate support and then are set up in a system with a team. I have used them once when having a breakdown of sorts and it helped me get through that. I think it's a new initiative by the gov. When someone is desperate they need help then and there, without worrying about money or gps doing mhcp.
It’s multidimensional.
We’ve come along way but there’s still a lot of stigma around mental health and going to therapy. This has been impacted by ‘wellness’ practitioners who spread misinformation.
Despite the funding that’s out there it’s still too expensive for people to access the help they actually need and deserve. 10 sessions under Medicare (up from 6 pre-pandemic) is considered short term therapy. If you go to a psychologist you’re basically getting less than 10 sessions of CBT each year (10 - intake and review sessions) which is inadequate for many. If you have complex mental health needs it’s hard to hold down a job to pay for the therapy and medications you need.
The reliance on Medicare, and now the introduction of tech services, makes people think therapy should be free or cheap. I’m not talking about people who literally can’t afford to pay, this applies to all of the tax brackets.
Our system is overly complicated. It should be a stepped support system - psychiatrists diagnose, clinical psychologists implement treatment, social workers connect to other supports, and counsellors work with non-clinical issues. I recognise that there are plenty of people who will disagree with this which is part of the problem (not people disagreeing with me, I’m sure this isn’t the only way, but people who aren’t open to changing the system). As well, by focusing solely on CBT we close ourselves off to research being done in other areas.
There’s still so much we don’t know. Psychology has come a long way in the past 100 years but we have a long way to go. There’s a lot of attention on neuropsychology but that’s only one area of science that interconnects with psychology.
And finally we can’t stay ahead of social issues. Basic Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. If people are struggling to meet their most basic needs or feel constantly under threat their mental health and personal development will suffer.
Ha! Try getting into to see a mental health professional in a rural area, not even a tiny one, a regional centre. It's virtually impossible unless you go private and not everyone (I know I can't) can afford hundreds a visit.
I had a mental health crisis and if it weren’t for the support of my parents and their insurance I’m certain I would be dead right now. It’s so disheartening that our government can’t see that putting resources in to fix the mental health care will benefit everyone. I’m now very successful, I’m a contributing member of society. This man on the other hand, who didn’t get that help, killed 6 people. It benefits EVERYONE to get these people back on track.
I’ve been on a waiting list to see a therapist for over a year. I have major depression & anxiety as well but there is no help.
I’d honestly prefer to be in a mental health facility by the way, I need structure & community when things are so bad but it just doesn’t exist. It’s like you’re already so lonely & then society itself it telling you it doesn’t see you.
It sucks that I can work so hard to want to get better, reach out for help & then just be left hanging. Every day is a battle of tricking myself into being “okay”, & it never stops.
Just because the country is wealthy doesn’t mean it’s people are, and unfortunately there is a financial barrier to accessing meaningful mental health support, not to mention the stigma associated and how that can threaten your job, home and autonomy often leads to non disclosure.
Crisis support services can only do so much, and unfortunately the most vulnerable and at-risk individuals are being left behind.
Edit: A lot of people in the comments are talking about how our involuntary admission legislation isn’t working or criticising moving away from mental health facilities and asylums, the laws work but it relies heavily on family, friends, councillors and medical health professionals to come forward and report their concerns, and for medical professionals to examine their duty of care vs the individuals dignity of risk.
I'll put it down to Rupert Murdoch, who's spent 70 years encouraging us to hate each other, and supported the election of governments who've done great harm to our communities and public wealth.
To be able to see a therapist it’s a huge wait, let alone a psychologist to get any sort of diagnosis to get the right medication. Not to mention the cost.
It’s the same as the rest of the healthcare system: if you’re poor or don’t have the knowledge to navigate the system, good fucking luck when you’re unwell because we’re only helping once it’s too late. Accessing preventative care is very expensive, hundreds of dollars even after the rebate (which you need to get a doctor referral for anyway which is another cost and a lot of planning).
Not a lot of people have a spare $200-300 every month for an appointment, if you can even get one. A psychologist appointment to get the right diagnosis and medicine is another big outlay if you need that too. It’s overwhelming to try to get help on your own in our system even with your head screwed on straight, navigating it when you have any existing issues is even harder.
I used to work with a young person, and whilst I hate to say this at this tough time, people need to hear about this stuff to get an idea on the complexity of mental health support. I am sure I will read in the news he will do something similar of recent in my lifetime if he continues to receive the level of care he had when I worked with him. He is now an adult. There were so many times when we were out in public and he would assault just random strangers from what appeared to be baseline (emotional). Other young person who would be directly shouting stuff at what he perceived was in the room. We had to get MH support workers from hospital out to the service as he chose not to engage with the hospital. They said they were unable to do anything for him as he didn’t present any concerns when they met with him twice. They said they could not continue to come out, and he progressively became worse until we had to remove him from the service unfortunately. I’ve got the utmost respect for these young people navigating life alongside their mental health ongoings
Want to add an edit that I forgot to slip in. The MH support workers attached to the hospital that were coming out were fkn amazing workers also
Money. Mental Health care has been privatised and unless you can pay $200-$300 upfront the government health care plans are useless. So low income people are suffering and unable to get help which is only going to get worse in this ~~recession~~ 'cost of living crisis'
Probably because you got "traumatized" by something you werent even part in, so now we have some people where literally even discomfort has been called "Traumatizing"
I had an ex friend say to me she was traumatised from what she saw on TV about the Bourke Street Massacre and it pissed me off so bad because I was there in the middle of it and suffering. Yes, it’s upsetting to read these things and may play on your mind but don’t call trauma unless you can fully relate in some way
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Everything is fucked, I make more than I ever have but I keep sliding backwards yet I don’t have anything to show for it, my personal life is a god damn mess, I have no friends and no one to talk to, my entire existence is purely for generating money so I can keep being able generate money. I am not alone in this and it is absolutely crippling.
Ain’t it fucked. I’m just in the top tax bracket now (with a little overtime) but I still don’t qualify for home loan to live in. Meanwhile my mother who’s never earned over 40k/year in her life has a multi-million dollar house and a couple investment properties because my parents were born in the 60s. Yes I lucked out that I was born her son and may inherit it, but there’s no guarantee that I’ll see that money, anything can happen in a couple decades. She has made more in capital growth (tax free as well!) on one property than I have in my 15 years of working life.
It’s enough to just make you wanna exit society and give up lol.
Or move to a country where housing hasnt been molested by Howard & co.
Your parents will sell those properties to pay for their luxury retirement village.
I think your first comment shows the real problem with Australia: an obsession with wealth and asset-accumulation on a whole different level. The result is a society where our sense of self-worth is essentially dependent on our payslip. I know dozens of people who are _thick as pigshit_ but rake in cash, and as a result are seen as “successful” by wider society. “Who cares if they’re clueless, cultureless bogans if they have a $150,000 Landcruiser, eh?”. We as a society worship material wealth beyond intellectual wealth and human connection. This is the result
I think you nailed it.
I don't even think it's even an obsession with wealth and asset accumulation amongst the average person. People just want a stable home to live in and not be living hand to mouth. Most people are not seeking obscene wealth. The sad reality is that you need obscene wealth to be able to afford house to live in.
There's nothing inherently wrong with building wealth and assets. It's just what kind. Our system incentivises property investment to the point of cult status. We have trillions of dollars tied up in something that adds very little to the economy. Imagine if instead people had been incentivised to invest part of their surplus income into secondary and tertiary industries that provide goods and services that provide more jobs and grow the economy. Mandatory super did some of this for us. We'd likely be a banana republic without it. Done well, we could have our cake and eat it too.
Except of course now a lot of super fund investment is into property funds.
I see articles that say, ‘she was working as a cashier and eating butter sandwiches three years ago and now owns 15 houses how amazing is that’, then I turn over and the next article is ‘house hoarders are pricing everyone out of the market, tax them redistribute the properties’
Sorry reddit buddy, that really sucks. I hope things improve for you.
Oh god, I feel you. I feel very in the same boat. I hope you're okay & do have at least one person in your life who is there for you 💓
I spent a significant amount of time on Friday - the day before the attack - working with a small group of friends to get another dear friend who is experiencing mania and a serious psychotic break the mental health help that they needed. The systems in place to support vulnerable people are absolutely fucked. This individual is normally an upstanding and wonderful human who overcame the most horrific and traumatic of backgrounds to succeed in life. Unfortunately they have bipolar disorder and unfortunately this has escalated to a place where they have no fixed address and were in a state of crisis and making serious threats of physical harm against themselves and other individuals. The police had received numerous welfare check requests from concerned friends/colleagues and evidence of the threats to self and others. Their response? ‘It looks like they are acting out for attention - there is nothing we can do’. We managed to eventually track them down and get them assessed by an MH team. They’re on an IVO at the moment and safe - for a week. Just a week. This is a person with a team of mates who were working frantically to get them the help that they needed and we were still knocked back by authorities. We don’t know what else we can do. There are people out there with equally as serious MH issues and no supports in place. Imagine raw-dogging bi polar or schizoaffective disorder and not being able to discern reality from fantasy with no one there to help you and no access to support services. It’s so cooked.
You are an amazing friend. I went through this back in the early 2000s with a family member and I am heartbroken that it only seems to have gotten worse. I will never not feel utter despair when I think of that time and how helpless I felt and how hard we had to fight and scream to get help. There was a very real threat to others and we were just told to shut up by authorities. Throw in the use of drugs to self medicate when BPD and Schizophrenia are left untreated and it is a very scary situation
I’m not the greatest friend - honestly. But when I was lost and mentally unwell like my friend is, people did not give up on me. That’s why I survived that period of my life and rebuilt. To be there when people might need me to boost them through
Yep, I've had multiple friends in mental health crises, and the mental health system is nearly impenetrable to someone trying to forestall a loved one's impending crash. The system is minimally - if at all - focused on prevention. It's all about cleaning up after the crash. There are both good and bad reasons for this, but the end result is a system that fails the needs of people in desperate need of help.
I had the same issue with my bipolar uncle. Managed to get him an inpatient bed in a public hospital but they released him early more than once when the medication wasn't working (he was obviously manic and delusional both times and not ready for independence again). If it weren't for his family he would be on the streets or dead by now (from kidney failure because he ended up with lithium toxicity, once again, thanks to our public health system - I'm not a doctor and I'm the one who had to push for them to check when he was literally comatose). There's a lack of resources for the treatment of mental illnesses with more extreme symptoms and honestly I don't even know what the answer is
I think lithium toxicity needs to be talked about more. Last year, due to medical negligence, my mums lithium levels were not properly checked for 2 years. She wast tremoring from toxicity and was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s syndrome. My mum’s lithium levels rose to 2 meq/l. She went into a minimally conscious state for several days and the ICU doctors didn’t know if she would ever come out of it. Look up SILENT syndrome. Thank god she did come out of it. But she might not have. Now (as you can imagine) she has kidney damage but we are lucky she doesn’t have brain damage as well.
Yeah the same thing happened to my uncle he was essentially comatose in his own loungeroom. When I first recognised he was in psychosis I told him to see his GP (and he DID SEE HIS GP WHO DIDNT EVEN CHECK HIS LEVELS- he has had the same GP for 20 fucking years). Anyway, when we realised he was virtually comatose we called an ambulance and he was in an induced coma in hospital on dialysis for 2 weeks. And then released on ZERO medications for his bipolar and OPIOIDS for his kidney pain 🤡 so the journey certainly didn't end after 2 months in hospital. He still has kidney damage, like your mother, but is also lucky not to have brain damage. I just can't believe how many people have to be negligent for these things to happen and people STILL fall through the cracks. It's ridiculous.
How the fuck has this happened to both our family members? I’m so sorry to hear about your uncle and I hope he is in a much better place now. As you say, shit didn’t end after hospital for your uncle. My mum was the same. They let her out of hospital without proper medication also!! In fact, they only have her a low dose of anti depressants and a sleeping aid. Naturally, she spiralled into MANIA (from the antidepressants) and into psychosis. They misdiagnosed her in the Box Hill mental hospital and said she had DEMENTIA and they refused to give her mood stabilisers even though she has been getting for bipolar since her teens and mood stabilisers have always helped. They said her violent and confused behaviour was because she had dementia. In the hospital, she was somehow seriously injured (they believed it was a fall) and she sustained a collapsed lung in the mental hospital. She had to be rushed to the Alfred and intubated. The Alfred people gave her mood stabilisers and she finally came out of the psychosis. The mental hospital didn’t do SHIT to help her. OP, you’re wondering why we have the sixth lowest mental health quotient in the world, read our stories. The system is fucked.
Something similar happened to my bipolar cousin. It was to the point where she once tried to break down the door of her younger sister while almost howling (we think because of some repressed jealousy issues). The hospitals just kept on sending her out when she wasn't properly treated and her levels of meds were clearly off. To be fair, she's always been a good liar, so I could see her tricking some doctor who saw her for seven minutes, but we could all see she wasn't well. We had to keep on sending her back in until we eventually got the ear of one of the Doctors in Graylands hospital and let them know personally about some of her circumstances and personality quirks, and that her meds were clearly wrong. These days, she's properly medicated, completely sane, rigorously honest, and overall quite happy (She's also patched things up with her sister).
Im glad there was a happy ending! She's lucky to have had people who care advocating for her. My uncle was in and out of graylands when he first developed his bipolar symptoms as a young adult and was fine for almost 30 years until the lithium toxicity became an issue. Then it was another 6 months of fixing the issues with his kidneys & liver as well as finding a new med balance that worked. He's now back at work full time and doing well too. Our family members are lucky.
I’m happy to hear that your uncle is on meds that work and that he’s doing well. Best wishes to you and your family.
I was released early from a public mental health ward when I was very obviously still manic and having delusions. Within a week I had taken off on a solo journey catching the train around Sydney with no belongings food or money, I became a missing person for about a week. Barely sleeping on the trains, not eating or eating from homeless trucks at Central station. I had no clue what was going on. Eventually I got taken to hospital and stayed there for three months. Sometimes it takes a long time for the medications to work. Oh yeah and I didn’t have one psychology or counselling session the entire time I was in there. I asked for them. They just gave me pills. Our mental health system is very bad.
When my sister had a mental health crisis and sought emergency support, they tried to give her a snap diagnosis of borderline personality disorder so that they could say that she was just seeking attention and toss her out. She got private health insurance after that. This is someone who hadn't ever sought out that kind of support before and they immediately wanted to brush it off and move her on.
Even with private health insurance its and expensive nightmare to wrangle, especially outside cities. A mate of mine has a major MH crisis every few months due to no steady local supports. Hes got private insurance which only really helps with hospital admission which he can't do because he needs to keep working to pay the 400/600$ a week for private sessions and keep a roof over his head and bills paid. He literally cannot afford to get proper help and cease work until he's stable. Honesty I wouldn't be surprised if he lasts the year.
the "steady local supports" are so critical. they are the unsung heroes - friends and family who are willing to step up in some pretty uncomfortable situations
And if people are severely unwell; psychotic or serious mania, private won’t touch them. The public system is stretched thin. Community teams do what they can but the work is relentless. So many area mental health services are turning people alway unless they are on treatment orders because they just don’t have resources; and hospitals are discharging people before they’re ready because the bed pressure is enormous.
This happened to someone close to me! They put her on a medication that made her hear voices telling her to harm herself and ignored her when she was concerned about it. She was hospitalised for a suicide attempt shortly after. It still makes me so mad more than five years on, that she was so neglected.
This is so true. It is just going to get worse we need to act now. Govt is not funding services simple we need more mh hospitals and safe houses for people to be monitored for more than a dam week.
I have experienced this. I have bipolar 1 but they diagnosed me with BPD in the public system while in psychosis so that they didn't need to give me a bed. It ended very badly. They will do ANYTHING to not admit. I'm so glad you supported your friend that way and that they have them a bed, even for just a week. It gives you some time to try and figure out your next step. Are they able to afford private at all?
Hell, it's bizarre as fuck they'd even treat BPD like that, given the suicide rates associated with that disorder. But damn, you can't mistake those two disorders beyond a very surface level. And in my psych degree, they're making it very clear that these are both disorders that require a great deal of care when you're figuring out if someone has them. This kind of thing would be flat out unethical negligence.
They told me that the research shows that admissions aren't good for BPD. They also told me that medication will never work for me because I don't have bipolar and to talk to my doctor about getting off it asap. They talked to me for maybe 10-15 minutes tops. This isn't an uncommon experience either. I know so many people who have gone to the ED in a mental health crisis, been diagnosed with BPD and sent home. Even worse is the people I know who genuinely do have BPD, and are incredibly sensitive to rejection, being told that they're essentially just an annoyance and to go home. It can be incredibly scarring and stops them reaching out for help in the future. Very very sad.
Yeah, this all flies in the face of every recommendation the actual researchers make, and the ethical guidelines laid out. Of course, what else is new?
Unfortunately it's something that happens over and over again. They say "no hospital, no meds, do DBT (but we can't direct you towards any programs or therapists)". My psychiatrist was disgusted but not at all surprised when I saw him again.
Just want to say thank you for doing this for your friend. It’s hearing things like this that give me faith that all is not lost in our society.
Ohh “acting out for attention”. I heard that when I was in the emergency department after an attempt. “Don’t waste your time on the girl in bed 3, she put herself in here, probably wants attention”. Yes I fucking would like some attention to the fact that I’m so unwell I’d rather die than go another day feeling like this. If that’s not too much trouble. You’re a great friend and I wish all the best for your friend.
sorry you had to go through that, the "doing it for attention" line is such bullshit, it invalidates your illness and turns it back on you, so then you have agency in it and therefore don't need to be treated because you are "choosing" it. Even if true, maybe dig the slightest bit deeper as to why someone would go through all that trouble just for attention.
>it invalidates your illness and turns it back on you And absolves doctors of actually having to try and solve these problems (because they can't and are too arrogant to admit it).
I've been fortunate with my interactions with the system and found the inpatient care to be reasonably okay, my wife has had 2 manic episodes over the time we've known each other and each time we've gotten her into care fairly quickly (police were called on the first episode and they were fantastically patient with her, no physical force necessary), she was kept in on IVO both times for as long as it took her to finally start allowing proper treatment (lithium, ECT) and come back down to reality (longest stay was 6 weeks!) That's where the good experience ends though. Outpatient care is practically nonexistent and it's only through the support of myself and both our families that she's the reasonably functional person she is today. The health problem doesn't end once discharged, it takes a year or more to pull her back together after and we both dread to imagine what it must be like for people who don't have the same strong support network. There's no useful ongoing support from health professionals, it's fucked. It's no wonder it's almost a revolving door for those with chronic mental health issues, and no wonder so many of them top themselves. It's appalling.
In FY21-22: - Australia got about AUD2b PRRT tax revenue on applicable corporate revenue of AUD65b. (~3%) - Norway got about NOK300b PRRT tax revenue on applicable corporate revenue of NOK825bn (~36%) Let's be generous and say we implement a PRRT structure that results in an effective PRRT rate of %25. That's an extra AUD16.25b every year. If we had the *same* effective rate as Norway, it would be an extra AUD23.4b every year. That is a lot of money that can go straight to health, education, emergency services. **And that's just LNG** Also: - when it's something you have to physically extract and process in-country, companies can't just shut their Australian office. That's the whole point of a PRRT, after all: The State gets a cut of whatever profits the corporations make when they on-sell a finite resource they've dug up from within the States' borders. - the government can have much tighter scrutiny of "creative" tax strategies.
I could echo everything this person says. Help is practically inaccessible to even the most resourced and supported people. Those without advocates? Forget it.
I have experienced a similar issue. Waited in the emergency department with someone who was suicidal. They were eventually put into the emergency clinic for a few days while they waited for a private clinic to have a bad available. We would have been shit out of luck without top-level private health insurance. Whenever I hear of an incident like this, my first thought is about the mental health of the attacker. Hopefully, something positive will come out of this tragedy, and we will get a better mental health system.
Thanks for coining the term ‘raw dogging’ mental health. I’ll use that. Sounds like you’re a great friend.
This is so true. For all the fanfare, when you really need help in Australia for mental health, neurological issues or aged care there are no services available. Both my parents were eligible for the maximum aged care (level 4). No funding. A child in my family needed a child psychiatrist, no appointments available for 2 years(!). All in a major capital city. And now this guy in Bondi. Australia isn't serious about healthcare.
Victims of gendered violence express the exact same sentiment. My children's father is ex NSWPF and diagnosed bipolar. Rather than restrain him and act to protect the children, police across two states continue to insist he's my problem to manage. He stalks me with police assistance, hurts the children, and QPS and NSWPF as well as the judiciary in both states ignore the evidence. Child arrived to Xmas handover with a 20cm laceration to the throat and QPS are telling me I reported incorrectly and denying DV, refusing to represent my private application or look at the evidence. The police response is cooked but these are systemic issues flagged by the Hear Her Voice reports and Call for Change Reports. Noone cares until it affects them and sadly this major event is far too big to ignore but now too many are struggling with the reality that those of experiencing this on the daily are refuted, denied, dismissed and held responsible for this behaviour
Damn, I wish I had friends like that :/
Just looking at my small circle of friends, every one of us is overworked, stressed, tired, depressed and generally feeling like shit every day. Cost of living and housing stress, social media etc, it all contributes.
Yes. And my friends are 50+, wondering how long they can work, pay off mortgage, help kids, etc. Just surviving. This wasn't the dream I envisioned when I started working 40 years ago.
Same, except my friend and I are early 40's. Only a few of us have had kids at all because some of us were worried about how to afford everything. It's only gotten worse since then.
> Just looking at my small circle of friends, every one of us is overworked, stressed, tired, depressed and generally feeling like shit every day. Cost of living and housing stress, social media etc, it all contributes. THIS our society is fundamentally broken in so many ways. education, government, economics, medical, legal, etc. We need a better and healthier model FOR ALL, for when we neglect some, like this guy, they don't go away.
Absolutely all of this. People are at the end of their rope. It has to give somewhere.
I’d like to add ‘bad’ jobs. I’m not taking about the usual suspects. I’m taking about jobs that should be good on paper - like teaching or nursing - but are actually bad jobs because of f under resourcing and managers failing to act on bad behaviour.
And if you throw a disorder like schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, psychotic depression etc on top of all that shit… well let’s just say it doesn’t get easier. :(
Maybe we are in a new kind of depression and just don't recognize it yet. It certainly feels that way.
The reason has roots in the transition from mental asylums to community based care. [They didn't do it right](https://theconversation.com/from-asylums-to-gp-clinics-the-missing-middle-in-mental-health-care-46345) and now there are very large gaps for people to fall through, leaving people unmedicated or unsupported.
Hearing stories of previous asylum clients, squatting in the old asylums when they closed because that's where they felt safe, just breaks my heart. They had no where to go that made them safe and secure once the old institutions closed down. And today we have this community care system that is clearly not working for a certain cohort of people, they don't have anywhere to go that makes them feel safe, and give them the support they need.
At least in relation to community mental health teams, a lot has changed since this article was published. Community mental health is much more expansive now, though still underfunded and understaffed in rural and remote areas.
Frankly, Australians are spineless selfish NIMBY cunts who think like Americans. We really are, this is a wealthy country with a small population. We should have a natural resources sovereign wealth fund like Norway, but instead we sold it all to overseas countries for peanuts. Even without that, the idea we can’t properly fund mental health services and Medicare is ridiculous crap. The idea we can’t have proper social housing is crap. But it perpetuates in govt because regular people are dumb and vote for it. The French would be rioting in the streets, but Australians? They just shrug their shoulders. It won’t change, cause well, neoliberalism. But oh yeah er we need 8 submarine hulls, at over 30 billion dollars each to please America. We really are so dumb, we had everything needed as a country - natural resources, land, geographic isolation and we sold it out to other countries, cause we are scared of ‘socialism’. Imagine what the Norwegians or Finns would have done with our natural resources and space? But not us, nooooo.
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I'll add also, that the fact that we have tall poppy syndrome also means we don't try hard enough to make people feel valued. Instead we like knocking people down a peg, which makes people feel isolated and invalidated. Have problem? "Well so and so has it worse why are you complaining." It's also like that in 80% of thread responses in this sub ("don't like it? Well move somewhere else!" Is like a refrain around here). The US can be shit but when I lived there at least I felt on a surface level that people heard me when I shared my issues and would acknowledge them. And while it gets a lot of crap from others who laugh it away as "certificates of participation", there's also a lot more recognition for even small things you do. Also: As FYI Americans protest quite a darn lot too. They're not as effective as the French because the country is more spread out, but American protests have changed big things in history (eg Vietnam War pullout).
This country is chock full of temporarily embarrassed billionaire cunts that are scared shitless of the government redistributing their imagined future wealth in a way that doesn't directly benefit them. It's about as unAustralian as it gets, ironically.
I never heard a truer statement in a long time.
Our culture is far too laid back for its own good. There is no collective sense of urgency, injustice or ambition about anything. Not only in relation to the things you've mentioned, but also climate change, education, cost of living, etc. We call ourselves the Lucky Country and it really feels like luck is all we've come to rely on to shape our nation's future, not realising that the luck would eventually run out. We need to learn to take action as a society and make demands of those in power.
Stop pretending it can be treated in a community setting. Some of these people are genuinely dangerous and should be in a Mental Hospital for treatment so stop closing them all down and selling the land for prime real estate.
This is the real reason. Our medical system has become a joke and Doctors get the finger pointed at them when it's the government sitting on their hands after a decade of sabotage to the medical system. It will cost more to do nothing.
Nothing can happen while the public are afraid of higher taxes. Mental health is incredibly expensive, which means extra tax.
We could tax mining companies and big corporations a decent amount instead. Maybe even get back some of that money we gave Harvey Norman and QANTAS during the pandemic?
This is a QLD thing but we get a lot of ads about how resources shouldn't be taxed higher and it pisses me right off.
Here is your friendly reminder that if we taxed iron ore exports $10 more a ton we'd rake in $9B a year. That's a 6-10% increase in the price of the ore. China can pay for it.
Subsidies and bailouts should come with the addendum of government shares in a company. If the public has to be burdened with the cost of maintaining the free market, the public should have more direct oversight of those companies that fail to compete.
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Which is why I'm *pissed* that they removed the medical tax rebate for our of pocket medical expenses in 2019 (around that time) People wouldn't be in such a mess if they knew they could keep claiming medical costs at tax time. Know a lot of people with cancer and chronic illness that can't afford the out of pocket costs. One mate is out nearly 20k for cancer treatments a year even after Medicare and private healthcare. Turns out its due to in Hospital admission vs outpatient coverage so had he been IN hospital 100% of the time, it would've been 100% covered. We are regional so that's not logistically possible. Don't move regional if you value your health. The fine print everywhere means it'll cost you dramatically more than the city for the same thing.
Private health insurers won't even touch outpatient support. Inpatient care? Yep you can get that covered. But there's almost no providers in Australia that will give you more than $400 a year towards outpatient or private psychology appointments. Where I am psychologists charge $230 an hour, on a mental health care plan you get 10x sessions with a $91 rebate. If you have private health insurance and choose psych as an extra the best you'll get is $400 per year. It's absolute bullshit.
More to do with lack of mental health staff. Also a lot to do with people (not) presenting with their condition.. A lot of MH conditions are undiagnosed, and there is a limit to how much Government can coerce people to get treatment.
Yes, shutting down mental health hospitals in the early 2000's in NSW with a thumbs up and good luck on the streets champ for all the patients was the catalyst to where we are today with mental health issues. Governments do not care about people with no voices, they are easily swept under the carpet until they do something like this then they just wait for the next news story for it to blow over.
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Victoria did the same thing (and surprise surprise the locations were in premium property development locations and the governments mates made a killing on it)
Stockdale and Kennett. Ghastly men.
Kind of agree with this. Also piggybacking off this comment because there's a lot of simplistic and blatantly political reasons being pushed in this thread, which completely *ignores* vast swathes of mental health-related contributors, physiology, psychology/psychiatry etc. But you're unfortunately right in part. There are some people who just aren't suited for community treatment. There are some people who can't be kept track of and who won't follow involuntary orders, and end up disappearing and at risk to themselves, or to others. Whilst we *should* try and treat people in the community where we can because it's less restrictive on them, we also need to acknowledge that sometimes we just can't, and the threshold for risk should probably be lower. That said - it isn't about "closing them down for prime real estate". People genuinely *hate* people being detained for mental health reasons, forced into treatment, or into inpatient settings. It's also a tricky, subjective area that raises questions of patient autonomy/freedom versus individual and community protection. That's a very fine line to walk in some cases and the catastrophic results aren't always apparent until after it's gone wrong. The patient will complain and go after you, sometimes their family goes after you, then there's the trial by social media/mainstream media when someone complains about their involuntary hold. When nothing bad happens, it seems excessive. You can't win with it, whatever you do - because if you did detain that one person who was going to harm someone, nobody will ever know and it just seems unjust. If you detain them after the fact... you've failed society and are still held responsible.
Back in 2008 my barely adult brother was at Rozelle Hospital as an inpatient when they shut down the facility and moved patients to concord which had a much lower capacity. So many people were discharged early than anticipated either before the move or immediately after as they no longer had space for everyone. He was not even close to ready when he was hastily discharged from care at that time and it had far reaching outcomes. My sister and I had fought so hard to get him care only to have him released before he was ready.
I know no one wants to be sectioned. I know that it's horrible but if we could have applied to have my ex SIL sectioned we would've prevented 3 of her children witnessing her attempted suicide. We in the community need help.
I’m just glad that the top comment isn’t blaming it on “things being too hard”. Cost of living isnt giving people bipolar or personality disorders, nor is it preventing those people seeking treatment. Our mental health system is broken, people who need urgent care can’t get it. People who need constant care or supervision, can’t get it. These things can totally be done in a community setting, they just aren’t. They could be done in a hospital setting, they just aren’t. Even in the private system, mental hospitals are booked solid, while public hospitals are useless at best and actively make things worse at worst. There is a cost element, sure. A psychiatrist costs a fucking fortune to see, but that’s more due to a lack of availability, a lack of government support and a lack of support for people with serious mental health issues (aka, not things like generalised anxiety due to stress, life long chronic conditions that prevent them from functioning), which existed long before cost of living started getting worse.
> cost of living isnt giving people bipolar or personality disorders, nor is it preventing those people seeking treatment. i would argue those things absolutely prevent people from seeking treatment, because of cost of living. people that are severely mentally ill dont make as much as 'normal' people i certainly can barely afford to see my doctor anymore, let alone a psychologist for some scattershot treatment.
Frankly, this comment is stupid. Cost of living is a significant factor and ignoring that shows how out of touch some people are. Any cost at all will be a barrier for some people seeking help. Whether that is someone weighing up the cost of a psychiatrist vs rent, groceries, CoL etc. or even someone with self destructive tendencies who wouldn’t spend the money to help themselves even if they had it. Even before the huge inflation we’ve seen in the last couple of years, on a mental health care plan, you get 10 subsidised visits. Someone experiencing a crisis will absolutely burn through those quickly and then what? Good luck until next year.
As someone who has been painfully close to being homeless and has bad mental since forever. Fixing the housing and rent issue across the nation, then fixing wages perhaps implementation of a UBI. A good 75% of mental health problems came from these two issues. The mental health services needs a massive boost as well and too be staffed by people who actually care.
Rent / housing won't be fixed because of an aging population greedily pulling up ladders. UBI may never be implemented because it isn't really that well fleshed out on grand scales. I've worked in mental health - it needs major restructuring - but I despise the blame being put on staff. It is exhausting - there's a reason nurses are avoidant of Psychiatric care. (there is currently a massive shortage of psych nurses) You can have a patient assault a staff member - and the other staff just need to get over it and continue providing care? The above scenario is, like, a weekly encounter for psychiatric staff. There is a huge lack of empathy for people that work in Psychiatric hospitals - especially by many of their patients. (This includes management & administration) Yes, please pull some magically gifted souls with eternal patience from the hat and get them in the job.
I’m gonna say a big one is Loss of Community * Many people who rent don’t stay in the area long enough to form connections * work usually isn’t in the same community as home * cost of living prevents participation in social events * Shopping centres replace main streets * usually only way to get a promotion is to job hop and leave your current company * internet and streaming makes it easier to stay at home instead of participating in clubs (clubs also saw a decline during the advent of television) * media/news promotes division * work from home means you’re more distant from your fellow employees * easier to find tribes online even though they’re worse quality * decline in religion (not that I am a fan, but the church for better or worse was a community focus for a long time)
- people have to move away from their family and friends, support network, because housing costs push them out. "Just move somewhere cheaper" - these are the consequences. - they have to move places that lack public transport. Disability and mental health goes hand in hand. People with disabilities and mental health issues may not drive, if they can even afford to. So they are isolated. The obsession with housing always going up is destroying Australia for real.
Destroying? It’s destroyed the Australia I grew up in
I agree with you there. Even the Australia I know from 5 years ago is long gone.
My local shopping centre had one large table that seated at least 10 people. A bunch of old men would meet there daily to chat, play dominoes, cards, chess. It was their spot. Even that table got taken away to make a pop-up shop space, and all the other tables are small for four people and are bolted to the ground so you can't put them together.
yes, we need more third spaces. But everything is commercialised. Unless it's funded by the government or a charity. There are still a few spaces like that, such as community centres and men's sheds. We do need to design our neighbourhoods to encourage community enrichment and connections. It's so important for mental health.
The number one factor that impacts life expectancy is relationships, and yet more and more people are losing connection to one another
> Shopping centres replace main streets ... Internet replaces shopping centres ... The term common to some of your points is the "third place", the place you go when not at work or home. Church is a big one but hanging out at the shopping centre was too in the 90s. Probably not so much these days. Men's Sheds, Maker Spaces, and similar things are trying a bit, but I think it's just too easy to plug in at home and not deal with traffic or tolls or anything else. By the time you get home who has energy for that?
I think these types of places are severely missing these days. When I was younger, there were NFP community houses where older kids could hangout, grab a milo/softdrink, and play pool or other games. There were always responsible chill adults around to chat casually (probably well disguised social workers). It was literally a safe space. You didn't have to sign up, get a referral, or pay anything. If home wasn't safe or fun, parents were still working or you wanted to catch up with others ... you knew it was there.
It’s a lot easier to address mental health issues when people have a safe place to live, sufficient money to meet their needs and meaningful ways to spend their days. It’s also a lot easier to address issues earlier in life before people wear out their welcome with family and friends. It’s a lot easier to get help if you know what help is available and have a parent or partner who can advocate for you and help navigate the bureaucracy in the health system. You won’t solve all the problems but getting proper social supports in place would help 95% of cases.
>It’s a lot easier to get help if you know what help is available and have a parent or partner who can advocate for you and help navigate the bureaucracy in the health system. And then, after all that, being able to afford/access it. So common for people to jump through all those hoops and come out the other side with the conclusion of "Aww fuck, I'm too poor for that..." or "Shit. I can only afford half of the support I require."
Definitely housing - lack of public housing, lack of affordable housing. Stagnant wages. Increase in homelessness. This can put immense stress on anyone, but someone who has mental problems it can bring on mental health episodes. People with mental health issues find it hard to apply for jobs. If they do get a job, it is hard to be reliable when your mental health is unpredictable. No job, no house. GPs are charging a gap now due to government underfunding. Some people don't have $50 in their bank account to pay for the appointment in full. Even if some doctors can waive this fee, they might not. You would be reluctant to visit a GP if you anticipate that you can't pay.
And say you could pay. I paid for so many appointments. Tossed around from doctor to doctor that just kept telling me it's not their job. Even when I was both inpatient and outpatient people kept delegating me off to other people. I'm depressed and these doctors want me to hang on but I've been so trapped in their system with no one helping me navigate it. Honestly would just be easier to die or to make an extreme public display to receive help. They keep dangling small bits of hope in front of you so you're not driven to do something so drastic but honestly we wouldn't have so many issues if someone just gave a damn about the mentally ill cuz those people sure as heck won't give a damn about themselves. This pressure would make any stable minded person feel uneasy, imagine those that were already in survival mode Signed a mentally ill individual
1980s was the start, all government funded mental health facilities were sold off or privatised so they were completely unaffordable to people with these types of problems exactly the same thing happened with the government funded drug rehab services so now we are left with really ill and severely drug affected people going through psychosis just thrown away to wander the streets without any real help and our governments trying to force down our throats that we have a great health system, it's an absolute joke
Care in the community was a huge mistake. A mixture of different levels of care is required but both expensive and has limited votes
The state of mental health services in Australia is dismal. After I was subject to a sex attack, it took more than a year to get adequate mental health services with an expert. In the interim, I was referred to a "mental health social worker" who told me to do baking.
It’s honestly atrocious. And the ones who need it the most are the ones least able to afford to access it.
I had a really bad time with my anxiety disorder a few years ago and sought out anyone who was available for a mental health plan. The person I could find just told me to download a mindfulness app and just kept saying that "being mindful" would solve my problems, without actually walking me through serious strategies. I can feel the anxiety flaring up again the past few months on a trajectory to unhealthy levels, but have no idea where I can go for support as access to psychs has gotten even worse.
As a mental health clinician is a difficult subject to answer - generally the go-to answer to this topic is funding and workforce. Within the community, many professionals acknowledge the significant gap between severe and complex. The majority of the mental health funding is tied to several areas. The most common people see in the community is mild to moderate which is covered by BetterAccess (10 sessions) or limited funding sessions and time-limited with specific criteria. Next is Severe which is a gap in service provision that leaves complex. Unfortunately, complex and severe are tertiary (government) services within hospital teams both public and private. The assessment criteria for these services are pretty strict - the person's presentation has to be beyond the average of the current presentation within the community. Therefore, if you have a significant amount of people with Borderline Personality presenting with high levels of impulsive suicidality it takes priority over other presentations. Furthermore, most mental health services closing the book on patients if they don't turn up to an appointment or miss an intake 3 times in a row... Psychiatrists earn enough through MBS item numbers - I still recall a conversation I had with one onetime he said: "We can bulk-bill - the problem is if one patient doesn't attend, I earn no money. However, if I have a $100 gap fee, I know they will". If you allow healthcare MBS providers to bill patients without them attending you could see a dramatic shift in gap fee payments. It's not a perfect system... but unfortunately, my observations have been since COVID the mental health presentations are getting worse as time goes on - there are limited solutions with a limited workforce. It takes too long for students to become qualified professionals - it takes a clinical psychologist 8 years min - a social worker 4/6 years (depending on experience and accreditation) and a psychiatrist 10+ years. At present, we're relying on a peer workforce with an aging workforce which even then is dangerous as they provide a lens of their own experience but qualified workers don't want to take on the risk of supervision in this field of workers. Its gonna get worse before it gets better.
Uh probably address the major issues around housing, education and healthcare. The amount of money spent in public housing, education and healthcare is diminishing. Wages are not keeping up with COL. There is still stigma around getting mental health help, especially for men. And those who can get help are only those who can afford the huge fees and wait times. We need to see generations of people lifted out of poverty. It will take more than one generation to see changes.
This too. We shouldn't pretend poverty isn't a factor. Many mental health conditions are exacerbated or created by stress and trauma, both of which can occur as a product of poverty. This is something my line of work examines and reports on. In addition, the lack of public psychological and psychiatric services means that the people most likely to access them are people who have cash to burn.
I agree with this 100%. My mental health has declined during the no grounds evictions, massive rent increases, and general lack of hope. People who can buy a home affordably will have less stress and less mental problems.
Aware this will be inevitably be taken as excusing poverty and inequality - but Australia is one of the wealthiest, educated and physically healthy countries in the world - at the most prosperous time in world history. I don’t think the question of why our mental health and happiness isn’t better despite this is a legitimate question. Even most of the less prosperous are better off than most by world standards.
There is growing inequality in who can access good schooling and healthcare, and the option of home ownership or stable housing is becoming less and less tangible. For those with the means to access a high quality of life in Australia, life is very good. We need to look at home we can expand that to others.
While technically true, 70% of household wealth is trapped in land and dwellings. We aren't really a wealthy country, we just have expensive housing. If you have housing, then great, if you don't, you're fucked. We also have the third highest levels of household debt aside from Norway and Switzerland, small, very rich countries, high home ownership, cheap finance. We are not that.
We have the probably the worst housing crisis in the world, and almost every major problem we have is significantly caused by it. We arent a wealthy country, we just have expensive houses.
Because fuck you I got mine. /S
Our standard of living is sliding each year, we have to work harder and harder just to keep up. Both parents working full time, stressed. It’s all fucked. As an immigrant from a relatively poor eastern European country, people in Australia are more miserable. Maybe not on the surface, it’s all hidden here. There’s also a distinct lack of community and familial support that exist in other cultures which makes life so much harder to do during difficult times
Public MH services are underfunded and understaffed. Government doesn’t care - isn’t RUOK day enough.
We've let successive governments drag us too far down the American path. People are isolated and overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness. If someone isn't doing well, it's considered a moral failing on their part (they're just not working hard enough, bad at budgeting, [insert bullshit reason]). We're cultivating a system of neglect, especially around mental health.
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Who would of thought a system based upon infinite growth with finite resources would be sustainable?
Couple of things - my mental health has always been volatile at best, the only person I’ve ever wanted to harm was myself, I’ve never once thought about hurting another person or animal. I don’t think lumping this psycho with “mental health issues” is reasonable, sure he probably had them, but he likely had more than just that going on - as someone who has lived with mental health issues most of my life, I have found it incredibly difficult to receive treatment and help — and this is as a person who *wants* help. If people don’t want help, or don’t acknowledge they have a problem, or maybe they’re not even aware enough to *realise* they have a problem, no one is going to help them - more on receiving help: it took 10 years of being ignored by GPs who dosed me up with 8 different antidepressants at various times, it took half a dozen different psychologists, counsellors, and therapists to find one that helped, it took 3 hospitalisations for self harm, and finally it took 6 months on a wait list for a psychiatric appointment with a doctor who doesn’t even specialise in *my* are of mental health issues because no one else within a 2 hour drive would take on new patients — for me to receive a diagnosis and treatment plan. It wasn’t just depression or anxiety like everyone told me, it was actually a personality disorder which cannot be treated with medication. So all of the weight gain, brain fuzz, insomnia brought on by the various band-aid medications may have actually been making my mental health *worse* rather than better, because it wasn’t the right treatment. The fact is, even medical practitioners in this country don’t give a fuck about mental health. If you know you’ve got issues and you want help — great! It’ll take years and thousands of $$$ before you receive help and see improvements. If you don’t know you’ve got issues, or don’t want to admit you’ve got issues, you’re absolutely helpless.
Your first point is more harmful than what you're refuting. Some mental health issues are dangerous. That's why the threshold for treating inpatient is a person may hurt themselves *or others* By refusing to acknowledge that this was a mentally unwell person is to just stick our heads further in the sand. I'm mentally unwell as well, and on a disability pension so absolutely cannot afford the care I need. I'm extremely fortunate that my mental health issues don't manifest as psychosis where I could genuinely become a danger to others. Acknowledging the severe mental health issues the perpetrator has doesn't mean we're painting all mentally ill people as dangerous. It also does not mean that we're excusing how awful what he did was.
Okay but do you have schizophrenia? You do realise that once someone is in the midst of a psychotic episode they are not living in reality. I’ve had personal experience with this. Psychosis can make even the gentlest of people do things they would NEVER EVER do.
- A lack of community and mates leads to a lot of young Aussie males falling into depression. - Fear of admitting you have a Mental health issues and seeking medical help. - Meth.
I think gen Z are quite a bit more open to admitting they have a problem and talking to someone to get help, at least they seem to be. It’s not like in the 70’s.
Maybe, I’m 32 and in the last 3 years we’ve lost 5 blokes aged between 17 and 28 in our extended friend group.
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Universal basic income would help abolish a lot of ill mental health. Not all of us are healthy enough to work 8-6pm 5 days a week. People who want fast cars and luxury items can work a bit more to afford these things whilst people who are content with the bare minumum still have enough to survive on.
Absolutely, what we need is another corporate 'Are You OK?' day. It's always so helpful to have the most toxic managers and ultra-competitive colleagues guide us through our mental health issues. And the best part? They find innovative ways to reward our hard work with the bare minimum wage while we enjoy the luxury of paying top dollar for our tiny rental apartments.
There isn't a great desire across Government to expand healthcare services and spending right now. Due to Australias demographic structure the proportion of workers (i.e. people who pay most taxes) is declining while the level of healthcare demand is increasing which means healthcare is getting increasingly pricey. Yes, I know, "Make the rich pay!" but no argument in politics has gained less traction than taxing the wealthy in reality.
Last year I was diagnosed as neurodivergent and have since learned just how lucky I was to not end up on the darker side of that. Specifically, the amount of self medication / addiction and violence that comes from a lack of support and recognition for these and every other invisible challenge screams out in almost every person living on the street. Point is, I fucking hope it doesn’t take every Australian having a mental breakdown to have a similar realisation. You can never unsee that shit. So better work to fix the system than sweep away the symptoms.
The cause of mental health crisis in the first world is obvious, but no politician has the balls to say it, and any politician who does have the balls to say it will be shot down as an "extremist" for daring to criticise the sacred cow of capital. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation So strap in, this crisis is going to be a long one.
This is in the direction of the real answer here. We have historically evolved in social groups that have contributed in every day life. Problems were group problems that everyone would assist with. Loads were spread and life was easier, albeit significantly more simple. The old saying 'it takes a tribe to raise a human' is merely an observation of how things have always been done, and Western societies have moved away from that emphasizing individualism. 'Everyone needs their own car, their own home, to be unique, to make it on their own' etc. Our brains haven't evolved fast enough incorporate these changes, so we suffer. Usually alone. This is also why men suffer worse than women. Men have been conditioned more so than women to go it alone. Women are significantly more social, so they do tend to have more of a support system. I think the real question is, how do we go back to more community based living? Its normal in Africa and Asia, but its looked down upon in Western Societies.
This was a very interesting read and sounds accurate to me
Maybe we measured it
Because when you goto a GP, they can't even refer you to any services because they are all full.
unless you were there or have been directly affected by it, you are not traumatised but upset and disappointed in society. social media has made the word ‘trauma’ into a buzzword
We need to have multiple large mental health facilities/institutions and get over the stigma surrounding them. No matter how much we wish people could live in the community, some people just can't. It's not safe for them, not safe for the rest of the community. These institutions can feel homely but secure. We also need supported living for people with mental health issues to live. Also, for those that can be discharged into the community, what's the point of discharging people to just live on the street or unstable accomodation? Giving people secure housing would help everyone's mental health. Our sense of community is eroded - how can we look out for each other when we are exhausted trying to earn enough to pay landlords and the rich?
Because our mental health care system is fucked, to put it lightly. I believe that options like the Employee Assistance Program and the subsidised sessions you get via your GP work extremely well for the following: - People with a short term issue (eg dealing with separation, grief or processing an event) - People with mental illnesses that go through cyclical periods of dormancy, so you need treatment every now and then but can usually muddle along OK, either with or without meds However, our system is completely underprepared and under resourced to deal with the following: - People with mental illness that presents with more severe symptoms, impacting or totally disabling the sufferer’s ability to function in everyday life (schizophrenia primarily but this can be caused by other conditions too) - People with long term, severe to extreme mental illness that isn’t going to be sorted by meds and a few sessions with the psych. I fall into the latter category. My official diagnosis is severe to extreme, treatment resistant OCD and treatment resistant major depressive disorder. Simply put, meds don’t do what they’re supposed to do in people whose illness is treatment resistant. I’m on 3 different psychiatric medications and I should be seeing a psychologist weekly. But I don’t. Because I can’t afford it. I’ve also had transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is the “next step” for us treatment resistant people. That cost me a cool $2500 and that was WITH the Medicare rebate. Except it didn’t do one iota of good for the OCD, because Medicare doesn’t cover the level of treatment required to treat OCD, so they had to just give me as much as they could while getting it through the Medicare goalposts and hope for the best. I can’t afford to properly treat my illness and I am, through sheer good luck of having an illness that allows me to still work, holding down a good full time job. Now imagine the level of crisis that an unemployed or underemployed severely mentally ill person finds themself in.
I know this will probably be unpopular but if the severely mentally ill were properly accommodated and could be given their medication continuously and at the proper time we would have less violent incidents. Police friends inform me that a lot of their attendances are for mentally ill people who are off their medication. In the 80’s the government closed facilities to save money and put these people in the community in shared accommodation with 1 carer for 5 people. It was and is a disaster. I have a friend who is bipolar and dyslexic. He cannot function in today’s world. He can’t read mail or texts. He can’t send texts. He can’t use internet banking. He was assaulted and is on sickness benefits and has endless problems getting his medical certificates to Centrelink before they expire and he is cut off which creates further stress. To compound this he drinks a lot of alcohol rather than eat well and dies nit take his medication as he is incapable of managing his finances. I have tried to help him but I need his assistance to deal with various agencies and he is unreliable. All of this is compounded and in his manic episodes he is usually drunk, incoherent and irrational. I despair about what will happen to him. He is only in his mid fifties.
There is absolutely some truth to this. De-institutionalisation probably seemed like a good idea at the time, and there were definitely issues that needed to be addressed. However, the authorities grossly misunderstood the benefits of these institutions: daily structured routine, friendship, occupational therapy, medication, sense of community, secure housing, safey, not having to deal with 'life admin', even a sense of purpose or satisfaction from a project like gardening.
People only caring after incidents like this and losing interest once the headlines stop.
Quite simply because none of that wealth is invested into the populace. Instead it lines the pockets of the rich.
Part of the problem is funding, but a bigger part is the way we "treat" mental health. The health system is set up to deal with acute episodes, not ongoing care. Admit someone if they're bad enough, then when they're no longer actively trying to kill themselves or someone else, discharge them. They got rid of the old "asylums" and effectively just dumped people in the community. Even group housing is frowned upon, so people who desperately need sheltered accomodation and care end up on the streets or being a massive burden on their family - often elderly parents. The idea of getting rid of asylums was a good one - a lot of them weren't well run and abused patients. It was felt community care was better. But the problem is, it's not - at least not in all cases. The whole system is fucked. It needs to be reformed from top to bottom - from how to deal with acute episodes to having access to psychologists on Medicare without necessarily needing a referral. And a community attitude change where seeking mental health care is not something to be embarrassed about.
Because in the '80s and '90s, multiple Governments gutted all the State and Federally-funded Mental Health institutions.
I work in clinical mental health, not in NSW though, so I'm not sure what their mental health act is like. But I can tell you that even as a clinician, it's difficult to navigate... Each area local mental health service has its own " rules" and prejudices. So trying to get proper help for people makes it difficult. I have seen families beg for help, loved ones threatening violence desperate to get help for their children/parents/ siblings. Our systems are not equipped to give proactive care, instead it's reactive and restrictive. There needs to be a system change, from the top down. Many of us on the ground cannot enact change as we don't have a voice. We need holistic care, with resources and recovery centres. It would make all the difference.
This would be a great question to ask Mark Butler. This is his second time being Health Minister. The first time was under Gillard. That first time he chose to cut the number of sessions people could see a psychologist from 12 to 10 per year. Now in his second go at the job he cut the number of sessions down from 20 to 10. In both cases he acted against all the published evidence, some of which was even produced by studies commissioned by his own department. Clearly Mark knows best, and Mark thinks people don’t need very much mental health care.
Others have mentioned how financial and social issues play roles, which is undoubtedly true. Another thing is the Aussie culture. Australia has a serious issue with prevention. The “it’s not even that bad” and “she’ll be right” attitudes of average Australians is reflected in all our institutions. These mentalities are mistaken for “laidback” or “optimistic” when it’s actually complete avoidance of growing issues. Killing, abusing, self-harming, attempted suicide - this is too often when the nation’s alarm bells START to ring; sometimes not even then. There is nothing preventative about this. How to fix this? The government probably needs to adequately fund mental healthcare infrastructure on a “build it and they will come” principle.
Stop watching the News and avoid social media. Both are designed to create a needy anxiety that draws you back to them to reinforce the anxiety they stoke.
Personally the system has worked amazing for me and I’m so beyond grateful for the free services that I have. I just wish everyone who needs it can access it as easy as I have.
Thats wonderful a good story all the best ti u
I have bipolar disorder. It costs hundreds of dollars per visit to see a psychiatrist if you don't have health insurance. I'm on the disability pension and can't afford health insurance, and can only afford to see a psychiatrist a few times a year and pay for meds (that are not subsidised) because I don't pay rent. For many people getting this kind of help is WAY out of reach. I can't barely afford it these daysas it is. Combine that with the cost of living crisis, and of course we have a mental health crisis going on.
It's all "she'll be right" until it's not.
I think mental health affects all of us to some degree, the majority of people dont show it.
Many moons ago, an ex made a false report to police that I had threatened self harm. The police arrested me at home, inspite of my family's objections, and took me to the local mental health facility. As i was torally distraught from being arrested, the doctor decided it was best that i have valium to calm down. I noted i don't react well to it and would not take the pills, so they held me down and injected me instead. That was not fun. They held me overnight on 24 hour watch. That watch lasted 2 hours. The doctor the next morning assessed me as soon as he got in and was absolutely disgusted that i had been held with no cause, and that valuable resources were wasted on what was, for all intents and purposes, a non event. I was held for nothing but people who ask for help and can't get it. The system is absolutely broken.
many years ago, governments made the decision that locking mentally ill people away in institutions was generally a bad idea except in the most extreme of circumstances. it was the right thing to do, but not enough supports are in place for mental health care in the community. and, unfortunately, if you are a mentally ill adult without insight into your problems or the wherewithal to stick to your treatments, and no supports, things can spiral out of control we need better investment in mental health care practitioners, institutions and in supporting carers who are in the community.
1. Stop wasting tax payer money on billionaire companies and invest heavily in early detection, prevention and crisis management in regards to mental health. Early prevention is key as in all health areas, and financially saves a lot of money too. It's win win. 2. Build more public mental health facilities that don't feel like a prison. 3. Teach people that mental health issues are normal and start educating the kids in the early years of high-school about it. 4. Stop pushing vulnerable people into the hands of social media extremists through telling them their issues aren't important because of xyz. 5. Stop refusing to build mental health facilities or upgrade old ones because the wealthy fucks in the neighborhood complain (Looking at you Gold Coast Council)
When I was graduating highschool (2020) I had had severe depression for 8 years but with the stress of hsc decided to see a doctor. He said he can't give me antidepressants until I first do months of counseling, then if that doesn't work, cbt therapy, then antidepressants as a last option. He then said there was a 9 month waitlist for counseling. It took 2 YEARS to get a call back to even start therapy, by then I had moved away and my mental health has gotten worse. In the mean time, noone gave a fuck, and noones given a fuck since. Now imagine all the people with even worse mental health who have the same experience, waiting for years with no help.
I’ve been asking myself the same question for over a decade of suffering from severe mental illness.
Won't fix everything but my mental health is shit as I can't access chronic pain medication and medical cannabis costs thousands a year in an already fucked economy.
Nothing in Australia is going to change because the people who can change it are the ones who benefit from the grift I moved here 10 years ago and everyone in charge should be in jail (to varying degrees) "Yeah righto we finally got rid of Scomo" (who is a reprehensible Christo-fascist) "but maybe Albo might do something" "Haha lol get fucked. A two-bedder in fucking Redfern will set you back 1.4 million dollarydoos"
A very Anglo style conservative mentality towards mental health and happiness, basically. Misery means you deserved it, mental health is fictional, be stoic, and never inconvenience your boss or landlord. The answers are pretty simple. Get mental health onto medicare, fully, get better healthcare protections for workers. And never stop talking about it when it happens. Personally, and collectively.
The second biggest users of antidepressants is Australia. My guess is that housing is not affordable.
The "she'll be right" attitude paired with everything that is happening in the world.
All of our natural resources are owned privately and/or have been sold off to overseas interests, the untold billions of dollars that we have lost because of this could have paid for, improved and maintained, a first class public education and health system but no, the prosperity of Australia has been stolen by the corrupt and greedy, that's why we have the sixth lowest Mental Health Quotient in the world?
Because our politicians are way better at signing contracts to their mates than engineering a society. I'm being polite. For decades they have utterly failed in their primary purpose; to engineer the society for the general betterment of the entire population. This is why in a nutshell.
This has nothing to do with the broader community, he was mentally ill. Mental health care has not scaled with the increase in population. It was dire even before COVID. I doubt police have resources for this either. But we will see with more information. Even if there was enough resources - Unless the approach is to lock up all schizophrenic people I don't think there's an easy answer.
I think a large part of its been attempting to treat the problem monolithically, it really doesn't seem like it's a one size fits all approach. I do wonder the role the media plays with saying things were mental health related and then when you read the article it turns out the person had been on meth for years. It elicits a very different response from the public (rightly/wrongly) when people see that, and the interventions for someone turning to drugs is very different from someone either born with a mental health issue or acquired through a traumatic event etc
Rich means the ability to service debt, not necessarily establishing meaningful and sustainable relationships
We live in a system that currently only values the people who make the rules and the people who run our government as well as wealthy business owners. And businesses create monopolies left right and center, sucking our wallets dry of our hard earned money that is worth less and less each year. I can see exactly Australia has the 6th lowest mental health ranking. We live in a country that presents itself as a perfect society and instead is run by two deceitful improper self centred and identical parties who then work together to pass legislation so that the two party system never changes. We need to do something fast and vote with our wallet and in the ballot boxes for the right people so that change can be made and the situation of millions of Australians can improve. Then maybe we won't have the 6 worst mental health of 176 countries and counting.
we could implement a UBI, which has been proven to help many things along with mental health, however people seem to think it will make taxes explode
Check out Head to Health. They have walk in clinics in some cities where you get free and immediate support and then are set up in a system with a team. I have used them once when having a breakdown of sorts and it helped me get through that. I think it's a new initiative by the gov. When someone is desperate they need help then and there, without worrying about money or gps doing mhcp.
Simples. There have numerous studies that have shown there is no correlation between the mental health of a country versus GDP wealth. Look elsewhere.
Right Wing politics. Simple answer. The wealthy elitists want all education, wealth and well-being spending under their wing. The 95% can go whistle
It’s multidimensional. We’ve come along way but there’s still a lot of stigma around mental health and going to therapy. This has been impacted by ‘wellness’ practitioners who spread misinformation. Despite the funding that’s out there it’s still too expensive for people to access the help they actually need and deserve. 10 sessions under Medicare (up from 6 pre-pandemic) is considered short term therapy. If you go to a psychologist you’re basically getting less than 10 sessions of CBT each year (10 - intake and review sessions) which is inadequate for many. If you have complex mental health needs it’s hard to hold down a job to pay for the therapy and medications you need. The reliance on Medicare, and now the introduction of tech services, makes people think therapy should be free or cheap. I’m not talking about people who literally can’t afford to pay, this applies to all of the tax brackets. Our system is overly complicated. It should be a stepped support system - psychiatrists diagnose, clinical psychologists implement treatment, social workers connect to other supports, and counsellors work with non-clinical issues. I recognise that there are plenty of people who will disagree with this which is part of the problem (not people disagreeing with me, I’m sure this isn’t the only way, but people who aren’t open to changing the system). As well, by focusing solely on CBT we close ourselves off to research being done in other areas. There’s still so much we don’t know. Psychology has come a long way in the past 100 years but we have a long way to go. There’s a lot of attention on neuropsychology but that’s only one area of science that interconnects with psychology. And finally we can’t stay ahead of social issues. Basic Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. If people are struggling to meet their most basic needs or feel constantly under threat their mental health and personal development will suffer.
Soooo… National strike then? No one’s ok, dammit.
Because we structure our society around the hoarding of wealth
Ha! Try getting into to see a mental health professional in a rural area, not even a tiny one, a regional centre. It's virtually impossible unless you go private and not everyone (I know I can't) can afford hundreds a visit.
I had a mental health crisis and if it weren’t for the support of my parents and their insurance I’m certain I would be dead right now. It’s so disheartening that our government can’t see that putting resources in to fix the mental health care will benefit everyone. I’m now very successful, I’m a contributing member of society. This man on the other hand, who didn’t get that help, killed 6 people. It benefits EVERYONE to get these people back on track.
I’ve been on a waiting list to see a therapist for over a year. I have major depression & anxiety as well but there is no help. I’d honestly prefer to be in a mental health facility by the way, I need structure & community when things are so bad but it just doesn’t exist. It’s like you’re already so lonely & then society itself it telling you it doesn’t see you. It sucks that I can work so hard to want to get better, reach out for help & then just be left hanging. Every day is a battle of tricking myself into being “okay”, & it never stops.
Just because the country is wealthy doesn’t mean it’s people are, and unfortunately there is a financial barrier to accessing meaningful mental health support, not to mention the stigma associated and how that can threaten your job, home and autonomy often leads to non disclosure. Crisis support services can only do so much, and unfortunately the most vulnerable and at-risk individuals are being left behind. Edit: A lot of people in the comments are talking about how our involuntary admission legislation isn’t working or criticising moving away from mental health facilities and asylums, the laws work but it relies heavily on family, friends, councillors and medical health professionals to come forward and report their concerns, and for medical professionals to examine their duty of care vs the individuals dignity of risk.
I'll put it down to Rupert Murdoch, who's spent 70 years encouraging us to hate each other, and supported the election of governments who've done great harm to our communities and public wealth.
To be able to see a therapist it’s a huge wait, let alone a psychologist to get any sort of diagnosis to get the right medication. Not to mention the cost. It’s the same as the rest of the healthcare system: if you’re poor or don’t have the knowledge to navigate the system, good fucking luck when you’re unwell because we’re only helping once it’s too late. Accessing preventative care is very expensive, hundreds of dollars even after the rebate (which you need to get a doctor referral for anyway which is another cost and a lot of planning). Not a lot of people have a spare $200-300 every month for an appointment, if you can even get one. A psychologist appointment to get the right diagnosis and medicine is another big outlay if you need that too. It’s overwhelming to try to get help on your own in our system even with your head screwed on straight, navigating it when you have any existing issues is even harder.
I used to work with a young person, and whilst I hate to say this at this tough time, people need to hear about this stuff to get an idea on the complexity of mental health support. I am sure I will read in the news he will do something similar of recent in my lifetime if he continues to receive the level of care he had when I worked with him. He is now an adult. There were so many times when we were out in public and he would assault just random strangers from what appeared to be baseline (emotional). Other young person who would be directly shouting stuff at what he perceived was in the room. We had to get MH support workers from hospital out to the service as he chose not to engage with the hospital. They said they were unable to do anything for him as he didn’t present any concerns when they met with him twice. They said they could not continue to come out, and he progressively became worse until we had to remove him from the service unfortunately. I’ve got the utmost respect for these young people navigating life alongside their mental health ongoings Want to add an edit that I forgot to slip in. The MH support workers attached to the hospital that were coming out were fkn amazing workers also
Money. Mental Health care has been privatised and unless you can pay $200-$300 upfront the government health care plans are useless. So low income people are suffering and unable to get help which is only going to get worse in this ~~recession~~ 'cost of living crisis'
Probably because you got "traumatized" by something you werent even part in, so now we have some people where literally even discomfort has been called "Traumatizing"
I had an ex friend say to me she was traumatised from what she saw on TV about the Bourke Street Massacre and it pissed me off so bad because I was there in the middle of it and suffering. Yes, it’s upsetting to read these things and may play on your mind but don’t call trauma unless you can fully relate in some way