Rather than asking whether we are doing enough about depression when it affects people who are living longer than they used to, should we not be asking ourselves whether we are doing too much to keep people alive when their minds and bodies are just plain worn out?

People who are chortling happily about living longer are usually not oldtimers - mainly fit middle-agers - who fondly see themsleves as feeling the way they do now when they are well past the three score and ten. I heard recently on talkback radio an 80 plus year old man, quite capable of looking after himself but suffering the usual and inevitable problems of age, telling a couple of self-congratulatory youngsters that they didn't have a "bloody clue" what it was like to be old.

While we all cling to life as a matter of instinct, keeping us around just because advances in medical science permits it is not necessarily a kind thing.

The cut in Federal Funding last year of nearly $1 billion to the States, means that we who suffer with depression in later life, of a chronic nature, do not have the medical professionals to help us in the regions. The Dept of Health in Queensland has just refered me back to my GP because they don't have a Psych to refer me to. It's a disgrace when the Howard Government has a $13.6 billion surplus