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The Forum > Article Comments > Towards a 21st century system of mental health care - an Australian approach > Comments

Towards a 21st century system of mental health care - an Australian approach : Comments

By Patrick McGorry, published 14/9/2011

A better understanding of mental health issues means that words like ‘nutter’, ‘schizo’ and ‘psycho’ will become as unacceptable as racist and sexist language is now. This is the antidote to the poison of stigma.

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Bravo Patrick McGorry. I am the mother of a 38 year old son whose mental illness went untreated for around 25 years,though for the first few years you blame all symptoms on adolescence and hope that they will 'grow out of it'. Had headspace been available, my son might have been treated earlier and not had to endure multiple relationships and their breakdown, poor physical health, multiple homes, not being part of his son's growing up, and more recently, until help arrived in the form of hospitalisation and treatment, homelessness and psychosis. He's now in rented accommodation and happy for that security. It is critical that accommodation is seen as a significant part of treating mental health.
Posted by popnperish, Wednesday, 14 September 2011 8:32:12 AM
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I agree that more money and resources ought to be made available for mental health, but I don't agree with the part about putting terms like "nutter" and "psycho" on par with "racist" and Sexist." These terms - racist, sexist - more often than not, are used to stiffle debate and discussion about issues concerning race and gender. As bad as calling someone a "nuter" may be, I think it's best to not allow government endorsed censorship into this area. Because, to be honest, some people do deserve the term "nutter."
Posted by Aristocrat, Wednesday, 14 September 2011 9:00:52 AM
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I am sorry to say this but this article offends me. I am a carer of my wife who has Dissociative Identity Disorder ( a mental disorder). Due to this disorder not been known about by the mainstream health system, my wife now also suffers with Epilepsy that can cause a vasovagal collapse (loss of consciousnesses, respiratory failure and heart arrest). Headspace told my son that is is imagining things that really happened. I get attacked by whoever via my YT accounts. I must get information via the internet or books published overseas and some of this is dis-information. I get depressed because I am usually hiding the fact that I live a very traumatizing experience with no help. Any agency that decides to help soon leave since they know nothing about D.I.D. None of this helps me shield the horrors from my children and have left me in monetary crisis for close to a decade. This is real (see below video) and my kids have been exposed to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnOOW3vrYGw

When does this end.
Posted by Alan Gresley, Wednesday, 14 September 2011 10:25:02 AM
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I stopped agreeing when it got to the point where it claimed mental illness was caused by social disadvantage. What a crock.

The best medical outcomes are achieved when patients have responsibility for managing their own health with a choice of professional advisers and supporters. This proposal is basically about surrendering to a vastly increased mental health industry.
Posted by DavidL, Wednesday, 14 September 2011 4:20:13 PM
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I sympathise, Alan Gresley, with your situation and would say that genuine mental illness needs to be addressed urgently.
But for me it's a problematic condition. Even those who be might diagnose as "genuinely" mentally ill, this doesn't establish the condition as spontaneous.
But to back up a bit, if Patrick McGorry is correct and his numbers of the mentally ill are accurate, why is treating them the priority? Do you suggest, Patrick, that mental illness of this magnitude, surely an epidemic, is a random affliction?
Obesity is another modern affliction, running at about the same rate as "mental illness", yet do we agonise over why so many individuals get fat? Is it in their genes, are they somehow predisposed? No, we know they are fat because their lifestyle is sedentary and avaricious--to coin a second-hand phrase, "consumptive'. This issue has been playing on Radio National this week; the sedentary lifestyle is depressive, which manifests as a tendency to comfort eat, which leads to weight-gain and positive feedback; low self-esteem, depression, comfort-consumption, addiction and bingo, "mental illness".
And you're saying lets have roving (and "assertive"?) mental illness teams in the community. Should we also have obesity paramedics?
When you have obesity and mental illness, and increased levels across the board of afflictions associated with an unhealthy environment, surely we should be looking at the environment, not sick individuals!
We have a sick culture, a culture of obesity and mental illness and sundry addictions. We are a degenerate race and individuals can grow healthily in a sick culture. The droves of the obese, cancerous and mentally ill tell us nothing about individuals and everything about the modern lifestyle.
As I was saying above, even many of those who can be said to be "genuinely" mentally ill are not necessarily indicative of an organic or individual pathology; they are our Canaries. We should not be palliating individuals, but looking at habitats.
But then mental illness is a boom industry and a lucrative market!
Posted by Squeers, Wednesday, 14 September 2011 7:08:30 PM
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Squeers writes: "We should not be palliating individuals, but looking at habitats." If some of mental illness is caused by chemical imbalance, why not palliate? But by all means look at habitat. I think the modern stresses of society are caused in part by more crowding, lack of access to natural areas such as forests, and high housing costs. These are all a function of excessive population growth so let's ease off a bit on that score, shall we?
Posted by popnperish, Thursday, 15 September 2011 9:13:50 AM
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Sorry, popnperish, to clarrify I didn't mean don't palliate; clearly people who are suffering require treatment. What I meant to say was that this epidemic indicates a pathological culture and we should be addressing it rather than individual symtoms.
I don't see how you can claim overpopulation has anything to do with it, especially in Australia, and considering that the highest rates of suicide are in wide open rural districts.
Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 15 September 2011 11:00:31 AM
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Professor Pat McGorry sets out the 21st century approach to mental health. Before that begins, we need to bring the care of ALL the seriously mentally ill (SMI)at least up to the standards of other health services in the twentieth century. Is he aware that ANZ Health Policy Research into the mortality of SMI from 1916-2004 was published in 2009? The study received no attention and certainly it's horrifying conclusion had no effect at all on the 2009/2010 federal mental health budgets. The study concluded that, for the seriously mentally ill, in these 88 years, "There are no gains".

The professor's figure of six completed suicides daily is incorrect. The WHO suicides statistics rates show Australia's as 21.1/100,000. No government entity has troubled to upgrade that statistic in seven years; any conclusion from it is incorrect. However, even using this, it shows twelve SMI complete suicide every day. The majority are older people,from 35-50.

Victoria has some 14,000 mentally ill homeless. The statement that most of this group are mentally ill young people presents a new view of the homeless which needs to be followed. It is pleasing to note the emphasis on housing needs. Those with severe and incurable mental illness may achieve all they can be with safe, simple, adequate low rent housing.

Mental health advocates have had a long-felt need to have Professor McGorry publicly express awareness of the emphasis on child and youth mental illness in the last two years. This has resulted in mental health buget inequities which are now impossible to change. Older SMI, with the highest suicide rates, struggle on in their somewhat C19 world and, perhaps, will be pleased to hear that the new federal funding of $1.5 billion, mainly to be used for early intervention, "does not yet fully reflect the measure of unmet need", which is their need, of course, but "it does lay the groundwork for future reform". We hope they live to enjoy that reform, since their life expectancy is about 55 years.
Posted by carol83, Thursday, 15 September 2011 6:37:25 PM
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carol83,
thanks for that sobering analysis, you've clearly done your homework.
I'm concerned that as with other enormous social issues, the emphasis seems always to fall on funding. Issues like "mental health" (rapidly becoming non sequitur) being virtually ignored by government (the mentally ill have always been the State's low-priority detritus) become the projects of PhD's and compassionate lobby-groups that are about as influential as the Greens. Fully-fledged professors tend not to see such issues from the social-justice perspective--being above the tawdry concerns of the State (whose only concern itself is to appear to act while minimising expenditure).
For academic-compassion, read niche-market, publications, research-grants, funding and honorifics. And yet, call me cynical but I almost prefer career-building and professional cynicism to passionate compassionates.
Are you really satisfied that "Those with severe and incurable mental illness may achieve all they can be with safe, simple, adequate low rent housing"? Are the mentally ill, both current and in the pipeline, merely a lost cause, an inevitable statistic that has to be met? Why is the "emphasis" "on child and youth mental illness in the last two years"?
What is the cause of the increase in these rates, and shouldn't we be addressing it, rather than mere catering--providing housing so that they can enjoy the illusion of normalcy and dignity? Which is what made them sick in the first place!
You might say the mentally ill still need to be taken care of, regardless of preventative action, but isn't it naive to suppose that any government can just go on providing a decent life, gratis, to this burgeoning dysfunctional cohort?
I can't see that your position is any different to Patrick McGorry's, it's just a grab for the allocation of funds within the mad-house, treating the incidence of mental illness like an act of God, akin to the weather in its inevitability.
Money spent on the infected should be minimised in favour of curing the virus--but that's going to take more than money!
You're both talking palliative care--playing the market.
Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 15 September 2011 8:05:40 PM
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Fatherless children and the breakdown of the family unit has contributed greatly to the increase in mental illness and suicide. Until these issues are addressed we are largely weeing in the wind. The social engineers are now reaping what has been sown over the last 50 years. Tragic really but the mantra of more funding fixing the problem does not cut the ice. The idiotic relaxed druggies policies and promotion of loose morals has contributed greatly to those experiencing mental illness. Experts are not willing to face up to these issues as the solutions are unpalatible.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 15 September 2011 8:23:58 PM
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