Julianne , thank you for your heartfelt and truly agonising story.

YES, who will stand up and say "NO MORE".

Mental Health problems have been in the forefront of news lately, with sporting people and polititcians alike
However this is a story which we would not see in the popular media.
Yet this story is happening everyday in some town or city around Australia.

Government has to take this issue serious with serious funding.

Our prisons are fast becoming mental health institutions as has happened already in the US.

Our police are being caught up with dealing with mental health issues.

The problem of bi-morbidity has to be addressed.

State governments responsible for health need to remember 'elections are coming'.

Mental Health services need review, overhauling and more funding, otherwise we will hear more and more stories like this case.

Dear Julianne

You are a most amazing person. I agree politicians are letting the mentally ill down. We have a 28 year old son with paranoid schizophrenia who is going through a major disintegration of the mind and we just cannot get help for him. We have written to all A.C.T. policians and federal telling them of our worries.
We have said that we are afraid of him and for him - he has assaulted his pregnant sister 2 days ago - he has threatened all of us and he needs full time monitored care - in his state of mind he may either kill himself or a member(s) of his family. We have seen his disintegration for 6 months now when he was obessively on a health kick and went off his medication. His sister has had to take out a Personal Protection Order and he is now being charged for assault - he will have a criminal record when all he needs is 24 hours care until he is stabilised on his medication. When on his medication he is a very lovely man - great fun with a wonderful wit. He was an A grade student at the Canberra Boys Grammar School with wonderful prospects - languages, science, mathematics, gymnastics (chosen for the Institute of Sport) music - he had it all. Now he is spirilling downwards and there is nothing we as his family can do, except try and protect ourselves. It is a desparate situation. Desinstituational has gone too far. We are very afraid he will end up in the criminal system and we believe if action is taken now this can be avoided.
I will keep lobbying the powers that be. But it may be all too late for our son.

It will take leadership and political will to improve mental health services. Both in short supply.

Apart from those tragically short changed by the MH system no one much cares about the plight of others so it is not a vote winner except at the very fringes of the electorate.

It will take a gutsy government to allocate adequate resources - following de-institutionalisation the G'ment saved squillions by closing grossly innefficient mental health ware houses but failed to re invest the money into community resources which is largely responsiblt for the mess we are in today - it has been argued that with mainstreaming funds have been injected into the general health scheme as well to address the imbalance but we know this is a crock.

The mentally ill get a very raw deal through mainstream, self serving health systems.

Because of the civil rights abuses perpertrated in institutions in the past the back lash has seen the concept of in-patient care, voluntary or involuntary, for mentally the mentally ill given a bad name - but leaving a middle aged parents alone to contend with, say, the challenges associated with a young adult child with shizophrenia makes about as much sense as leaving a burns victim at home. But it is done - all the time.

It would be a blessing if the community were as concerned with the plight of the mentally ill as they seem to be with the imaginary fear associated with bloody terrorists and all the other clap trap that seems to dominate the popular press these days - and these pages.

It is often said it takes a tragedy to get the attention of policy makers and the public - but the history of mental illness littered with tragedies occuring daily - but no one seems to care.

There remains the misconception that mental illlness is just a weakness of character - the cult of the individual and the survival of the fittest philosophy has distorted not only our perception of each other but the degree to which we care about each other.

mental health is not the only area of social welfare and health care to be sidelined since the 1980s saw a change in economic policy.

a consistent trend to shift responsibility for doing things away from those who have the means, the power, has been going on for some time now. 'outsourcing' separates the 'delivery' services from the 'allocation' of resources to provide them. 'user pays' makes the person in need responsible for resourcing their own assistance, often irrespective of their capacity to pay or their capacity to _seek_ help.

then the people who cannot afford, or cannot manage, their own help get blamed for failing to be able to afford or manage that help. after all, resources *have* been allocated, and services *are* available.

the degree of general ignorance regarding mental health and disabilities is astounding. our media have done little to change that - indeed the promulgation of prejudices and plainly incorrect information by our media is shameful. which is not to absolve politicians of responsibility in any way.

i would say that it is high time *people*, not economics, were the centre of politics again. money is a tool we invented to serve our purposes, not the other way around.

Since there are already a shortage of psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses in many countries, including Australia, I don't see where the staff of these centres would come from even if the goverment had the money. Since these are evidentally also not particularily appealing careers for people, I presume it is unlikely this problem will or could be solved in the short or medium term with just money.

An alternative might be to better fund preventative measures, like trying to reduce substance abuse for drugs where we know there is a link to mental illness, both legal, like alcohol, and illegal, like ecstasy, so less people end up needing these services. In this case, there might be less demand on these services, and hence people needing them might get better care.

Mr Howard spends 11 billion dollars on blowing up innocent Iraqis in this pathetic little American Invasion and he can't afford to look after his own people. What a joke. With the money he spends on arms he could put a couple of new psych nurses in every hospital in the country. What a little scoundrel he is.