Latest / The Front / Remote communities’ mental healthcare crisis

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Remote communities’ mental healthcare crisis · The Front

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  Speaker 1: A note before we start this episode mentions suicide from
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  Speaker 1: the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm christin amiot.
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  Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, December eleventh. Anthony Albanesi visited a Melbourne synagogue
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  Speaker 1: on Tuesday, four days after it was targeted in a
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  Speaker 1: terrorist attack.
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  Speaker 2: This arson attack is an act of terrorism that was
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  Speaker 2: fueled by anti Semitism and it was stoked by hatred.
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  Speaker 2: Where a country that needs to come together in unite.
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  Speaker 1: The Prime Minister was swarmed by a group of worshipers
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  Speaker 1: and community members during the visit, with some of those
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  Speaker 1: in attendance heckling the PM as he made his way
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  Speaker 1: to his car following a tour. Foreign Minister Penny Wong
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  Speaker 1: and Treasurer Jim Chalmers both defended Anthony Albanesi's response to
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  Speaker 1: the firebombing, saying he's very engaged on the matter. The
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  Speaker 1: Reserve Bank has kept interest rates on hold at four
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  Speaker 1: point three five percent for the ninth straight meeting. That's
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  Speaker 1: despite pressure from the unions to deliver a rate cut
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  Speaker 1: before Christmas.
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  Speaker 3: The truth is that some inflation pressures remain, and cost
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  Speaker 3: of living pressures remain a burden on all Australians. It's
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  Speaker 3: also important to note that prices are not going back
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  Speaker 3: to where they were before this high inflation.
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  Speaker 1: Those stories alive right now at the Australian dot Com
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  Speaker 1: dot au. Australia's mental health care system is in crisis
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  Speaker 1: and one group is shockingly overrepresented in the figures. Today,
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  Speaker 1: Health editor Natasha Robinson unpacks the ways the system is
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  Speaker 1: failing Aboriginal people when it comes to mental illness. Out
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  Speaker 1: back Australia, it's the stuff of legend, the domain of
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  Speaker 1: the world's oldest continuing culture, where vast planes give way
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  Speaker 1: to towering summits and deep valleys. In Australia's storied center,
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  Speaker 1: there's red dirt as far as the eye can see,
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  Speaker 1: and it's there that the wheels of a light plane
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  Speaker 1: touched down, the roar of its engine cutting through the silence.
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  Speaker 1: On board that aircraft is a handful of medical professionals psychiatrists,
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  Speaker 1: GPS and nurses. They've made these trips to some of
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  Speaker 1: the nation's most remote communities before, where they administer antipsychotic
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  Speaker 1: medication to love unks of the population with precious little
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  Speaker 1: time for counseling or consultation. They're called depot injections where
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  Speaker 1: drugs are released slowly into the body over several weeks,
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  Speaker 1: when the physicians will return to do it again.
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  Speaker 4: I would say that the situation in remote Australia is
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  Speaker 4: dire for people experiencing mental illness and indeed disability, especially
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  Speaker 4: in the Northern Territory.
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  Speaker 1: Natasha Robinson is The Australian's Health editor.
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  Speaker 4: The situation there is that there is virtually no health
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  Speaker 4: care for people with complex severe needs in these communities,
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  Speaker 4: and there's virtually no publicly funded outreach service either, which
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  Speaker 4: is quite an astonishing thing.
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  Speaker 5: Really.
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  Speaker 4: If you are in remote Australia in the Northern Territory,
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  Speaker 4: unless you are admitted to hospital or you happen to
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  Speaker 4: be able to access some services in Alice.
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  Speaker 5: Springs or Darwin, if you are on country.
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  Speaker 4: Hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away experiencing severe mental illness
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  Speaker 4: or cognitive disability, there's very little health care available for you.
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  Speaker 4: So it is an extraordinary thing to imagine that this
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  Speaker 4: is the way we do healthcare in remote Australia, and
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  Speaker 4: it really is a form of community control effectively, because
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  Speaker 4: these communities have very little health care and not a
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  Speaker 4: lot of policing. They can be quite dangerous places. Things
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  Speaker 4: get out of control when people's health is not looked after.
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  Speaker 1: When she ran for office earlier this year, Northern Territory
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  Speaker 1: Chief Minister Lea Foranokiio campaigned on a tough on crime platform.
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  Speaker 6: We've been really clear that it's important to hold people
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  Speaker 6: accountable for the crimes they're committing, but to put them
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  Speaker 6: on a better path going forward.
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  Speaker 1: And that's since winning that landslide election in August, for
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  Speaker 1: Nokiaio's Country Liberal Party has pushed through a suite of
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  Speaker 1: changes under its Criminal Code Amendment Bill that includes lowering
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  Speaker 1: the NT's age of criminal responsibility to ten years down
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  Speaker 1: from twelve, and tougher bail legislation designed to keep young
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  Speaker 1: people on remand for longer limits, such.
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  Speaker 6: As book kids. This is important work that needs to
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  Speaker 6: be done and they do need to be more diversion
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  Speaker 6: options for our cause. But importantly, it's not just about
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  Speaker 6: dealing with young people or offenders once they're already committing crimes.
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  Speaker 6: This is about making sure we give kids every opportunity
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  Speaker 6: in life.
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  Speaker 1: To succeed and that's why opponents of the reforms say
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  Speaker 1: the multi year Justice reform rollout plan will cost taxpayers
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  Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars and it's being viewed by
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  Speaker 1: healthcare providers with despair.
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  Speaker 5: This is a disaster for some communities. It does land.
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  Speaker 4: People in prison quite frequently, and the healthcare situation for
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  Speaker 4: them in prison is very bad as well, absolutely scant services,
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  Speaker 4: especially in juvenile detention. Approach to health care is one
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  Speaker 4: of control through chemical restraint, the use of physical restraints.
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  Speaker 4: It is not a healthcare setting for people with severe
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  Speaker 4: mental illness and disability. And we have had extraordinary access
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  Speaker 4: as part of our series which we've called Cast a Drift,
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  Speaker 4: looking in depth over the course of an entire week
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  Speaker 4: nationwide at the mental health situation for people with severe needs,
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  Speaker 4: and we have a public sector psychiatrists, very senior psychiatrist
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  Speaker 4: Marcus Tabot, on the record telling us that he personally
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  Speaker 4: has literally had to cobble together resources for youth and
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  Speaker 4: adolescent people in need across Central Australia because there is
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  Speaker 4: no public funding to provide this. He's just saying, look,
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  Speaker 4: we have people come in to Alice Springs Hospital where
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  Speaker 4: he works, but we are not resourced for inReach to
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  Speaker 4: the prison or to the juvenile detention centers. We're not
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  Speaker 4: even resourced to provide any care outside of Alice Springs.
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  Speaker 4: That is an extraordinary situation for some of the most
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  Speaker 4: vulnerable people really in our societies suffering mental illness. Of course,
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  Speaker 4: many of them do end up in juvenile detention centers,
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  Speaker 4: which are quite frankly hellholes.
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  Speaker 1: Nayomal woman and psychologist, doctor Tracy Westerman runs a charitable
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  Speaker 1: organization that helps healthcare professionals conduct mental health screenings in
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  Speaker 1: a clinically and culturally informed way. She's built a network
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  Speaker 1: of Aboriginal psychologists and is hoping to open the first
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  Speaker 1: national Indigenous psychology treatment center. But her work has never
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  Speaker 1: been supported by government funding, relying instead on scholarships, donations,
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  Speaker 1: and her own money.
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  Speaker 4: Well, Doctor Tracy Westerman is an extraordinary professional based in
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  Speaker 4: Western Australia and she is very passionate about establishing a
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  Speaker 4: national network of Aboriginal psychologists and she's actually beginning to
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  Speaker 4: employ them through her own foundation and hoping to start
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  Speaker 4: the first national Indigenous Psychology treatment center. Because it's so
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  Speaker 4: critical that people receive culturally appropriate support, but support that
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  Speaker 4: is actually going to be effective at the end of
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  Speaker 4: the day, people need to receive care from people that
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  Speaker 4: they relate to. I mean that's the case for all
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  Speaker 4: of us.
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  Speaker 1: Research conducted by the Westerman Julia Institute for Indigenous Mental
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  Speaker 1: Health found a quarter of young Aboriginal people who presented
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  Speaker 1: to mental health services around the nation, just over twelve
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  Speaker 1: hundred of them had attempted suicide. For some it was
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  Speaker 1: more than once, and almost half have thought about ending
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  Speaker 1: their own lives. The numbers are shocking and undeniable.
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  Speaker 4: Doctor Westerman is trying to form this as a national network,
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  Speaker 4: but she's made comments to the effect that if you geo.
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  Speaker 5: Matt where the risk is in this country.
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  Speaker 4: She's talked about Alice Springs, She's talked about Scherbourg in Queensland.
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  Speaker 5: She talked about Walgurt in far western New South Wales.
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  Speaker 4: All of these places would be lighting up like what
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  Speaker 4: she describes as a Christmas tree, because there is such
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  Speaker 4: severe need in these areas.
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  Speaker 5: Yet they are the areas where there's.
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  Speaker 4: Almost a total lack in some senses of service provision.
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  Speaker 1: Coming up inside our groundbreaking analysis of the state of
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  Speaker 1: Australia's mental health care system, Natasha Robinson has been working
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  Speaker 1: for months on an in depth review of Australia's mental
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  Speaker 1: healthcare system, alongside former Australian Medical Association President Professor Steve
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  Speaker 1: Robson and academics from the Australian National University. On Thursday,
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  Speaker 1: a policy report will lay bare the stunning eight billion
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  Speaker 1: dollars shortfall in services across the nation, including a lack
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  Speaker 1: of hospital beds and housing.
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  Speaker 4: It is very clear that the SEVIE the year end
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  Speaker 4: of the spectrum of mental illness is critically under resourced.
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  Speaker 4: That is quite obvious when you look at the outcomes.
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  Speaker 4: What you have here is a cohort of people one
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  Speaker 4: to two percent of the population experiencing severe mental illnesses
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  Speaker 4: that represent, when you take mental illness as a whole,
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  Speaker 4: the second biggest burden of disease in the country.
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  Speaker 5: It's a very large burden on.
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  Speaker 4: Taxpayers, but it's an even larger burden on families and
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  Speaker 4: the sufferers of these mental illnesses, who by and large
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  Speaker 4: really have quite poor treatments available to them. And I
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  Speaker 4: think it's something that more than deserves to have a
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  Speaker 4: light and shone upon it. What else I have noticed
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  Speaker 4: as a health journalist over the past five years covering
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  Speaker 4: successive budgets.
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  Speaker 5: It just seemed to me.
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  Speaker 4: Year after year at the commonwealth level, you have these
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  Speaker 4: quite enormous amounts of budget line items going to digital
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  Speaker 4: resources for people with mild to moderate mental illness, in fact,
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  Speaker 4: pretty mild level of acuity. An eight hundred and fifty
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  Speaker 4: million dollar spend for a website for people with mild
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  Speaker 4: disorders was the biggest line item in mental health in
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  Speaker 4: the last budget. Now, I don't think that you can
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  Speaker 4: sensibly make an argument that the people who are accessing
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  Speaker 4: those services are going to be saved from this trajectory
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  Speaker 4: of sliding into a psychotic illness.
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  Speaker 5: It is not the way that it works.
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  Speaker 4: So we need to resource these very severe conditions.
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  Speaker 5: We need to.
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  Speaker 4: Actually put the money behind keeping people well. And since
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  Speaker 4: the era of de institutionalization, that promise that there would
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  Speaker 4: be community resources that people would have the care that
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  Speaker 4: they needed to live fulfilling and meaningful.
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  Speaker 5: Lives and to be well as they all deserve to.
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  Speaker 4: Be never materialized. And that is why this is still
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  Speaker 4: a story. That is why we look back over the
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  Speaker 4: past three decades and say this is a comprehensive failure
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  Speaker 4: and there has to be a line in the sand.
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  Speaker 1: Natasha Robinson is the Australian's Health editor. You can read
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  Speaker 1: all her reporting on the state of Australia's mental health
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  Speaker 1: sector right now at the Australian dot com dot au