The authors:
McGorry’s likeness to Geoffrey Edelstein is striking. Will he too one day fly a pink helicopter and own a football team; I wonder?
Surly to drag the GP kicking and screaming into the mental illness primary care role, as your article suggests, is a strategy bound for failure. His role is surely to treat physical illnesses with roots of pathology/organic origan.

Since very little mental illness (include here suicide) originates from the physical source, mental illness must therefore be categorised as a disease of philosophic or socially deviant nature. From this view the solutions are much simpler and raise the question “why should the tax payer fund treatment of any illness which has no physical origan”?

This view solves the problem of funding using the philosophical argument. Governments are correct to argue that all those in society should contribute to the economic wellbeing of the greater mass by avoiding the excuse of mental illness to justify malingering.

To diverdan...your knowledge of mental illness appears extremely poor; please examine the following facts to your satisfaction. The major illnesses classified as serious/severe in mental health are schizophrenia, bipolar 1 disorder and/or severe clinical depression. These are incurable and biological diseases of the brain which may now be seen in some scans and in post-mortem examinations. The areas of the brain exacerbated when voices are heard may also now be viewed. World Health Organization statistics show a global rate of severe mental illness as 3%. In Australia's 20 million this means we have some 600,000 seriously mentally ill people suffering a disease with the WHO suicide rate of 10-13%.
We do not care for our severely mentally ill and mental health reform is desperately needed.
I find it difficult to believe that you have had no contact, however tenuous, with a person who has severe incurable mental illness and/or
has completed suicide.

Another ludicrous situation in mental health....PEC Units...psychiatric assessment units attached to Accident & Emergency Units in most General Hospitals...the idea of a PEC Unit was to take pressure off triage and remove mentally unstable people from Accident and Emergency, due to the disruption they often create. Good idea. But the PEC Units won't accept anyone that is unstable!?!? Of course, this forces the mentally unstable patient to remain in Accident & Emergency until they "stabilize".

We don't have lunatics running the asylum...oh for it to be that good!! What we have is complete idiots ruining/running everything!

Diver Dan, "Since very little mental illness (include here suicide) originates from the physical source, mental illness must therefore be categorised as a disease of philosophic or socially deviant nature"...I'm afraid there's much more to it than that. There are numerous forms of depression in which suicidal ideation may feature. Some forms suggest genetic links, such as bi-polar, while others not, such as reactive depression. There's more, but we only have 350 words.

The affliction is more accurately categorized as psychological and emotional, not philosophical. Deviant only means minority, not in "normal" parameters, while "normal" only means averaged amongst the collective. There is no such thing as the "normal" or "average" person. These are statistical terms, not a human condition. For it is "normal" for ALL humans to experience the gamut of metal health symptoms and features at one time or other in their lives....for example, you only have to be awake for 24 hours to start experiencing some psychosis. Only need the death of a loved one to experience at least briefly, mild depression. We all have habits, and some may be "obsessions", and so fall under the neurotic umbrella, at times. It's only when these "features" overtake our lives so that we cannot function in a "normal" manner, that we can say that there is a "problem".

TBC...

The tax-payer funds health care. The source of poor health is not the concern of the tax-payer, but of the individual concerned, the medical staff, the researchers in the field(s), and ultimately, the government and insurance companies in funding most of it. Causes in both medical and mental health are rarely clear-cut and singular in nature...there's usually many contributing factors, and over-lapping features of other issues.

So in a "holistic" approach to health care, cause is the concern of the researcher, positive therapeutic regimes and outcomes the concern of the practitioners, and the will to make changes and adjustments to their lives is the concern for the individual(s) involved.

The tax-payer then may rest assured that regardless of the cause for them to be in need of whatever service, the service is there. If there's an individual tax-payer that never is in need of such services, then that is a very rare tax-payer indeed.

Agree with most of what written above by veritas, MindlessCruelty and Caroline93.

Tony Abbott's broadband misunderstanding presented as a plan horrifies self - suspect others also.

Wanting to see established and used on-line video-counseling services to assist assessment and treatment of many rural and remote areas people who suffer mental illness.

The NBN from ALP at least offers us chance an on call pool of trained, qualified, experienced and competent mental health people to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness sufferers

Caroline 93
There are many events in life that prompt one to feel the need to bail-out (suicide); let us be sensible in drawing conclusions about diagnosis of mental illness. As with schizophrenia, not a disease in itself, it can be argued, but more an aberration of the mind I would think; a conclusion based on the view historical facts of that classic “illness” (sic).
Another bleating argument often heard in support by weeping and wailing for the mentally ill is the incidence of mental illness amongst inmates of jails. I read recently that figure was at 40% of inmates. Well, here I extend the debate to cover this group. Surly if one breaks the law to the degree that incarceration becomes necessary, where is the problem? Should we release 40% of detainees as a gesture towards mental illness? Extending the logics of the argument put forward by the “industry” (again sic.) now looking for more taxpayers dollars in support of overpaid medical “experts” lounging back on the mental illness gravy train.