"Currently mental illness accounts for some 13.3% of the disease population of Australia, yet a mere 7.8% of the overall health budget is expended on mental health."

What about cancer patients vs flu patients? This sounds more like a plug for the psychologists to tap deeper into medicare.

A friend of a friend has been in the funny-farm for some years. Those of us who have known the victim for yonks and have some understanding of the events leading up to her confinement believe she could be 'sorted out' with proper professional one-on-one care, however the present system simply doesn't have the resources. As a result, she is destined to spend the remainder of her natural pilled up to the eyeballs and surrounded by others in a similar plight. Some may well be hopelessly ga-ga (beam me up Scotty) but others are probably 'salvageable'. Sad.

Come on mate, I'll bet if we got rid of three quarters of the psychologist, & all the rest of the practitioners, the number of suffers would drop by a similar number.

Most of us are crazy, but luckily we have not met a psychologist who has told us so.

Has anyone ever met a psychologist who was not at least half crazy? Cut the budget & cut the problem is the best way.

This smacks of special pleading along the lines of the "don't club the poor baby seals" variety. We all know that mental illness is a sad state, so our author here has painted a picture that suggests we are being cruel not to cough up more money.

"I want to suggest that we need to have a greater public commitment to mental health, in order to rectify the above imbalance"

What "imbalance", pray?

By what financial logic can you arrive at a dollar equivalence, one that says a dollar spent on, say, emphysema, has more/less/the same value as a dollar spent on treating depression? It is a false premise, and an exploitative one at that.

Where is the evidence that the 7.8% of the health budget that is directed at mental illness is too little/too much/being spent optimally? Surely, before holding out one's hand for more of the public's money, a case needs to be made on facts, rather than through an unseemly exploitation of our natural compassion?

Hasbeen - Has anyone ever met a psychologist who was not at least half crazy?

That mob are sane compared with psychiatrists ... you may be right though one lot are half-crazy whereas the other ones are positively round the bend

Pericles

I'd like to see more focus on all hitherto neglected medical disciplines, including mental health. In order to do so we need to demand our elected officials AKA bloodsucking parasites undertake a major cleaning up of the acts under their individual control. Its perfectly obvious that far more taxpayer money is squandered on crap than is spent wisely, as is exemplified by the ongoing health payroll saga in Queensland. Who knows what its cost, last I heard the total was out past the limits of the known universe and still accelerating.

I'm particularly incensed with the money squandered on aliens, surely the first responsibility of those we elect is to citizens / taxpayers ?? If perchance there is some left over, or even if EXCEPTIONALLY needy cases arise, then maybe we could consider the odd once-off exception but most definitely not the wanton chucking our money around like a whole navy of drunken sailors as is the wont of the red-headed witch, the Greens & the RAbbott.

Mental health is strongly correlated with social function, as I understand it, by which I mean that it emerges from or is revealed by interactions with the world that are associated with social function, with obvious exceptions for some types that arise from organic causes.

If we understand the way that society and people interact in terms of its effect on mental health, we may be able to reduce the problem to a small intractable set of physical illnesses that may be amenable to symptomatic relief or other medical intervention.

One of the things that affects men is a lack of functional purpose. We tend to be defined by our role and if that role is either absent or is not a definitively useful one we tend to become unhappy and so it goes. I think it stems from the simple awareness that the male role in reproduction is a small one and that one man can impregnate many women. Redundancy is an essential masculine feature and it has been exacerbated by the social impetus to get women into the workforce, which has lead to male unemployment climbing to levels not seen since the Great Depression.

Page 5 of this paper shows a graph covering the 30 years to 1998 which is instructive

http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au/staff/jib/documents/Dimensionsetc.pdf

In an nutshell, we need to find things for men to do that need doing and we need to make sure that they understand we appreciate their efforts.

Any ideas, anyone?

Spot on Anti, hmm but doesn't the whole thing sound familiar? Of course, here is the answer to the problems on remote indigenous communities, give the men something to do which makes them feel valued! Both the mentally ill, and indigenous men suffer much from sit down money. Give them all something meaningful to do, and you open a pathway to freedom.

Life is full of violence and catastrophe. Imagine two people,racing in a car at 110k on a highway. They have just passed a signpost saying 90. Suddenly, another post looms up with an arrow pointing to the right, advising 70. Only a feeble attempt is made to negotiate the bend. Instead, the car veers off the road and smashes into a tree. A passerby stops, looks at the wreckage, sees the occupants pinned in the wreckage and bleeding. He thinks it looks "funny", laughs and callously moves on.
praxidice(2), do you think a cry for HELP would not have emerged from the victims?
Let me emphasize, "Laughter is the best medicine", but only in the right situation. Ridicule has no place in a serious discussion of Mental Illness and Health Reform. Nor should "crime" be linked to mental illness. We are all endowed with a capacity to choose between good and evil from the moment we are born to the day we die.
All creatures have a basic urge to survive, from the smallest insect to the roaring lion, human beings included. Indeed, Life is sacred, the supreme value. This belongs to the realm of religion. Nobody has a monopoly on this basic fact.
May I suggest, values can not be bought with money. Instead, it may just be possible to bring about a serious health reform without the expenditure of money! Provocative? Maybe.
To my mind, Antiseptic(7), and JonR(8), you are on the right track. Productive meaningful work can be an important mitigator of mental ill health. But more often than not, employment requires a suitable educational level. Should a psychotic episode intervene during the early years, social stigma sees to it that neither education nor employment is possible. Can this circular dilemma be prevented?
Sigmund Freud, the papa of psychiatry, considered conflict in religion is a primary source of mental illness. His final work, "Moses and Monotheism" denigrated Moses, and made the Egyptian Pharoah Akenaten the first Monotheist. His ideas of the Oedipus Complex raced around the world as the panacea of his time.
Contin... shmuel

Part 2
Yet Freud was challenged by another Jewish psychiatrist. Christian religious authorities have remained silent for more than 60 years. The world of orthodox science has indulged in the most shameful attempts to ridicule and denigrate this challenge, the most recent being evident in the publication of the popular Australian Science magazine "Cosmos", Issue 48 Dec 2012/Jan 2013 pages 36-43.This publication rather ironically, co-incided with a conference on the Tipping Point of the Electric Universe Paradigm for the 21st Century.
It is gratifying to note an Australian scientist is one of the primary progenitors.
Perhaps praxidice(6), you might check out p24 of the above journal. You will there see the red headed PM handing out $300,000 prize money to a direct friend of Brian Schmidt who also won $US500,000 back in 2007. Check out The Canberra Times 18 July 2007 for the Simon Grose article about "Mixed Messages ..." Of Wal Thornhill's website, Schmidt said "...there is nothing here that actually passes scientific scrutiny." Elites prefer the layman to remain uniformed.
There is much confusion between the BigBang Paradigm of the 20th Century, and the Electric Universe of the 21st Century.
There is much confusion between Judaism and Christianity, without even trying to resolve the dilemmas of other religions.
There is much confusion between Science and Religion. Check out Lawrence Krauss and Fred Nile, Q&A ABC TV, Mon 27 May 2013.
Any wonder parents have trouble trying to develop a healthy spiritual identity in the modern child.
It is not money that is going to help lessen and resolve some of the dilemmas of mental illness. Rather, it is for elites (in both the scientific and religious worlds), to adopt a brutal honesty towards the conflicts between science and religion. The continued denial of the pervasive role of the Thunderbolt steering the Universe is unacceptable.
Suggested starters to initiate honest dialogue and debate :
1) Evan Camp, "Exciting Students with Unsettled Science" - > http://youtu.be/Bf60fw-Ckb8
2) Wal Thornhill, "From Cosmic Currents to the Electric Sun" - > http://youtu.be/HgdJcghkri4

Best wishes to all
shmuel

ERROR:
In my post on 17 June 2013 9:45pm, a faulty YouTube video URL Hyperlink occurred. Hopefully it is corrected here :
Evan Camp,"Exciting Students with Unsettled Science" > http://youtu.be/Bf6Ofw-Ckb8

In addition, a typo occurred - "uniformed" should have read -"uninformed".
My apologies
shmuel