What twisted logic socialists advocate!

It’s not “Medicare” that funds the health system, but money taken, in many cases without consent, from productive individuals, then handed over to others, many of whom are unwilling to take responsibility for their own welfare. It’s the most iniquitous and de-motivating system imaginable.

To then express concern about GPs not seeing the proposal as stealing their income … words fail me.

I couldn't agree more. As a mental health professional I often feel frustrated that clients are unable to received counselling due to the cost. Private psychologists are prohibitively expensive. Waiting lists for low-cost counsellors at Community Health Centres are long. Counselling centres such as Relationships Australia charge around $50 for an individual on minimum wage (earning under $25,000 a year). Psychiatrists often only provide supervision of medication and a 15 minute appointment slot. It makes A LOT of sense to me for clinical psychologists to be covered by medicare for short-term treatments. Perhaps then more people would be compliant with their medications, perhaps they would discover the underlying causes of their depressive or anxiety symptoms - and no longer need so much medication.

Stephen Leeder's article which asked for psychologists to be funded by Medicare puzzles me. Psychologists simply study natural human behaviour, it is Psychaiatrists who treat patients with recognised mental disorders.

Mr Leeder should be asking for Psychiatrists to be funded by Medicare, not Psychologists. If Mr Leeder is a psychologist himself, perhaps he is simply touting for business on behalf of his profession?

Winston Smith,
If only all posters were as honest with their posts, you have no idea, and are prepared to say so, that is a positive attribute.

Redneck,
You are correct and incorrect similtaneously, Psychiratrists do try to find the root of the problem and pescribe medication which may be helpful to the particular mental illness, in my case Chronic Major Depression, with accomping chronic illnesses. The Psycologist is a vital partner in the exercise, as they can offer behavioural ways with which to try to beat the situation these two health professionals work in tandem, one in theory, and the other in practise.

They are both vital to any chance of a recovery from mental illness, and with 20% of our population suffering a mental illness at any one given time, resources should have been out there 10 years ago to help with early intervention.

Shonga is correct.

Once a mental illness has been stabilised - usually by drugs prescribed by a psychiatrist, a person still needs help with getting their life back on track. This is where techniques such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy provided by psychologists can really assist a person to turn their lives around by learning new ways to respond and perceive the world. While medication assists with mood, to proceed with our lives often require letting go of our old ways of reacting (for example, responding to bullies) and learning new ones.

However, while it is possible to receive Medicare for Psychiatric treatment, psychologists are not subsidised yet they are the ones who provide the skills for people to cope with their lives.

As someone who has attended both professionals over many years. I can report that psychologists play an important part in recovery, with out their skills it is difficult to make a full recovery.

It is one thing to suffer from mental illness and quite another to learn to live and progress from that illness.

Dorothy Rowles (noted psychologist) made an interesting observation in her book "Way out of Depression" that it is generally the caring people who are the ones who get depressed. Those who don't care about doing 'the right thing' tend not to get depressed.

Sufferers need to learn about to become more detached from the problems life throws at us. Medication can't achieve this, pragmatic coping skills can.

GPs are generally not well equipped to deal with folk with mental illness. Psychiatry is a strange profession whose main role seems to be doling out drugs - not a bad earner really. My experience is that it is folk such as the psychologists who do the main work in getting to the essence of problems and precipitating events, and helping in the development of coping skills and other behavioural strategies. It would be helpful to break the medical world's stanglehold on health services.

Mr Leader

Thank you for your timely article. Of course clinical psychologists should be allowed Medicare rebate.

Thank you to all posters

It is important that people understand the difference between someone who has a psychology degree - anyone can do that - and specialist psychologists who have a clinical degree.

Further, it is important that people understand that clinical psychologists specialise in abnormal psychology (the study of abnormal psychology is akin to psychiatry. I have literally dozens of books on my shelves from both disciplines - and which I have read of course).

I have worked with many clinical psychologists during my career, and I have referred many of my clients to them - without the need for medication (vis a vis: the clients).

It is not true that all people who have a mental health problem necessarily need to be medicated.

With early intervention strategies by community mental health nurses and GPs, people can be referred to clinical psychologists without medication, without hospitalisation, and who can, as Scout rightly points out, learn through CBT and other psychological strategies, better ways of thinking and therefore living.

People with mental health problems can go to community mental health centres and consult with clinical psychologists for around a year, cost free. Well, that was the scenario in the previous mental health centre for which I worked in NSW.

Cheers
Kay

PS: Community mental health nurses make the initial assessment and diagnosis, psychiatrists confirm or otherwise the diagnosis, and then the community mental health nurse (case manaager) refers the client to a psychologist if same is necessary.

Still on the same merry go round more staff, more money, more drugs. No decrease in incidence, or a cure. All drugs, have detrimental effects on humans, slowly destroying organs. Drug therapy masks the problems, doesn't fix them, yet more are being prescribed.

What about the cause, no mention of that, as these problems are big money earners. The approach to this growing epidemic of depression and mental instability, should be finding out what factors are fueling this pandemic.

That won't happen, because all these professionals would have no work, the drug companies would lose their growing profit margins. Professionals would have to change their mind set, would have more time for mental problems that aren't attributed to lifestyle practices. They won't find the causes, because they're not economically acceptable. Can you imagine the uproar if they discovered that it was the chemical additives in our foods that were the main cause of growing mental instability.

It just shows how narrow and really scared people are about the true reality of our way of life. The growing evidence that leads towards lifestyle as a major cause of all illness, will continue to be pushed aside. People can't handle the idea of being responsible for their health and will continue like lemmings, to line up and be drugged into illusion and depressive lifestyles.

So before you all yell and scream that I don't know what I'm talking about, answer one simple question. If not lifestyle, what is causing this rapid growth in these problems. After all, professionals all have these tertiary qualifications in these matters, don't they. I don't, but I can tell you, that by advising people about their diets and approach to lifestyle, seems to have a more beneficial effect than any drug or professional counseling, from those who's knowledge and experience comes from books and a classroom.

Teaching people to control their own lives, is a very empowering and mentally progressive approach, compared to making them a confused victim of not knowing and drug reliance. Once people know what is causing their problem, they cope much better.

The alchemist,
I agree with your post in as much as you propose to discover the reason, the trouble starts here. There are many and varied reasons, sometimes trying to deal with grief, stress, post traumatic stress disorders, bullying the list goes on, I have previously posted my own circumstances of long term workplace threats and bullying covering more than two decades, however there may be a thousand reasons. Untill those reasons can be understood properly, and effective treatment found a small percentage of us, may never recover.

Vietnam vetrans have been my largest support network, they understand the connection between depression, anxiety, insomnia, as they live it everyday exactly like others of us. To add confusion to the issue my diagnosis is Chronic Major Depression with Generalised Anxiety Disorder and related phobias. The vetran who suffers exactly the same symptoms is diagnosed with post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

To me it is unbelieveable that humanity could put a man on the moon in 1969, however can not develop a drug, which allows a person to achieve an 8 hour sleep. Yes we do need more staff, more doctors, and more scientists, untill we tackle the causes for the distress of 20% of our population,i.e. 4 million Australians.

Shonga, I am a veteran and have suffered from massive depression, PTSD, manic episodes of uncontrollable behavior, ending in jail. Add to that, afraid to go to sleep at night in fear of what it would reveal.. Drinking to oblivion, more drugs, same result, you just get worse. The events of the past don't leave you, but you can learnt to live with them and negate their effects.

This didn't come about until I was forced to change my diet because of a supposed terminal health condition. Life isn't easy, particularly if your government and people are in denial for many years, even your own family and friends.

You see my active service was just before Vietnam and wasn't revealed until more than 30 years later. So just a few of us had to put up with our demons, even when Viet Vets finally got help, we didn't. It was only when the prescribed time limit had past and they had to release the relevant documents, that suddenly we had medals given to us, offers of help and support.

That help, came in the form of more drugs, counseling by people that have no experience or idea of what we went through. Basically their stupid and haven't a clue. Put them in the firing line behind enemy lines, or in a jail for a few months and see how they handle it. Then get their colleagues to counsel them and see the reaction.

Ridding my body of all the mind altering chemicals, the degenerating preservatives and other unnatural additives, sure woke me from the slumber of mental torment. Now I cope well, until I inadvertently consume something that has a additive in it, then it starts again until its out of my system.

I can tell you that this approach has helped lots of others in similar situations, as well as those in other terrible circumstances. I spend lots of time with people, helping them cope and understand the myths they are force fed regarding health, once they understand, they are already in front of the problem.

Although it seems cynical i tend to agree with the Alchemist's post. It's a catch 22 for a pharmaceutical company to provide a cure for something because if they were to eliminate an illness entirely then there would be no further need for their product and they would be doing themselves out of business. The emphasis therefore seems to be on "treatment" and courses of medication that alleviate symptoms but do not cure.
However, I'm sure there are many pharmaceutical scientists out there who are genuinely researching cures and are working hard for the betterment of mankind. Though sometimes i wonder if this fixation on finding the answers to all our problems in a little white pill is actually leading us up the garden path.
Shonga makes a good point that support groups are a good help to people with mental troubles and that sharing and connecting with people to identify with is very therapeutic. Perhaps more should be done in that direction rather than pinning all our hopes on a chemical fix.
As for medicare covering mental health treatment, well i would want to be assured that the treatment was successful and effective before i accept that my tax dollar is being put to that use.

Wow there are some touching posts here so far. Thanks to those who are opening up about your own experiences and lives.

One issue raised in the article which does seem critical and that is about health professionals working more closely together. In this case the management of symptoms and getting at the underlying issues are both vitally important.

For those opposed to Medicare funding for psychologists services it is worth considering from a pragmatic sense the cost of ungoing uncured mental illness and the treatment of the symptoms vs the cost of curing the illness. It may be better economic value than you think even if you ignore the human cost of mental illness.

R0bert

If you ever have a mental health issue then opt for the psychiatrist. He does more than dole out medication. The psychologist only helps people with simple common sense approaches which the average person could work out for themselves. Access to a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, clinical nurse, etc are all available free of charge at lots of hospitals without a time limit. Of course you have to meet the criteria of having a mental illness. And that's the mistake most people make. Just because you're temporarily having difficulties, or being naturally depressed (not clinically) doesn't qualify you as having a mental illness. There is a large group of people who have never learnt to cope, work their way through things. Problem is that these days everyone wants a quick fix. Someone is always rushing in saying something requires counselling or therapy. It's been proven that too early an intervention actually escalates problems. It's normal to grieve after a death; to be despondent over some major disappointment. But one shouldn't race off to a psychologist or other professional. Give time a chance. Sometimes the constant going over of events cements them in the mind and makes it impossible to let go of the memories etc. We are in an era of self-help groups and therapy for all. Everyone is both a victim and a perpetrator. Makes for quite a lucatrive industry for psychologist and counsellors. Given the current standards of the necessity for counselling/therapy we should all be receiving assistance to get over a wrongdoing done to us and at the same time should be counselled/in therapy for some real or imagined wrongdoing to someone else. Have psychologist fees payable through Medicare? Oh great, the many people with a personality disorder will just love that and drive our taxes up.

While Mr Leeder led with the notion of opening up medicare funding to psychologists - something I support in principle - there is a higher order question about access to that stream of funding to other health professionals to help counter work force shortages and mal distribution of doctors.

The productivity Commission has recommended that be looked at in a serious way - the AMA are not happy undersatandably;

There are any number of tasks that could be undertaken at a discounted rate by other professionals - its already happening. The old way of delivering health care has passed its used by date and needs a shake up. Leeder s suggestion is just one part of that.

Of course Medicare should fund all Health Professionals, this is why we pay tax, and we have paid so much that a $17 Billion budget surplus is being spoken about. We pay tax to recieve services, not to fund huge surpluses, that said if we have a huge surplus most of it should be spent to upgrade service the public need, such as Health and Education.

Yes Winston, it is another communist plot, normally refered to as "user pays"

Lorrainetag, much of your post I would agree with, especially regarding early interventions sometimes making problems worse. However, there are a few points that you make that appear to be from lack of knowledge regarding what psychologists learn these days and what they actually do. Granted temporary problems people have can often be worked out by themselves. For problems that cannot counselling is often sought (not necessarily a psychologist). Psychologists, on a whole, however deal with much larger issues then that; such as management of schizophrenia, OCD, drug free ADHD management,bipolar, major depression, eating disorders and the list goes on. A psychologist also uses the same DSM IV as any other medical practitioner - the difference is that they have had at least 6 years training purely in mental illness. It is much preferable that patients attend a psychologist for mental health problems rather then a GP, who bogged down with a room full of patients (often with simple viruses that need to run their course) will spare 10 minutes flat and frequently write a script that is inappropriate without a full diagnosis.

I think the concern that people will run to a psychologist for every little problem and drive up taxes is unfounded. These same people make many visits to doctors now. The only difference will be that they will be seeing someone well versed in the field of their illness.

Spot on post Coraliz.

As someone who has suffered from chronic depression for many years, I agree with your observations about the type of care that psychologists provide.

Another problem is that psychologists cannot write medical certificates or workcover certificates - the GP has to be informed either by the patient or psychologist, who then completes the paperwork. This is double work and clogging up health system - patently absurd.

Well for a starter the drug companies and the psyche-tries arent going to let the psyche-logics take over their turf and monopoly are they now, well not in a hurry anyway, thats for sure.That,s the first hurdle.Secondly i would just like to say that if there were psychologists available to the insecure and confused people they wouldnt have to become really depressed and drugged would they and they wouldnt have to wear a permanent mental dissorder tag but then some of them want to,but the ones who dont should be given the choice and thier not,guess what some of us know why.other than that have a nice day

Having an intimate knowledge of this issue, I completely agree with Stephen Leeder.

Psychiatrists (Medicare) treat only a small minority of those with mental health problems principally those with serious Psychiatric illness who need medication.

People with anxiety, depression, panic disorder, children with behavioural problems, relationship problems etc are all much more prevalent and are better treated by Psychologists. This is indisputable. Unfortunately, you have to pay $100 an hour (or more) out of your own pocket or get on a long Govt queue.

Some companies pay for this service now because of its proven cost effectiveness. The Goverment lags behind.

Anyone who argues against Stephen Leeders proposition either lacks knowledge, has a vested interest in the status quo or is just a simple fool.

This move would save billions in avoided lost work time/improved school performance/improved family functioning. Believe me I know!

In case you haven't caught up on the latest - Shonga I know you will be interested...
Medicare WILL be dramatically expanded to allow more mentally ill
people to see psychologists on referral from the family doctor as part of a $1.5 billion plan to tackle the nation's mental health crisis."
See details in article in the Australian.
(http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/

Of course it has to come in writing yet...but it is good news for many people and I think intelligence has prevailed - see my previous post