More on Mental Health

How very easy it is for governments to sweep the problem of mental health under the carpet. After all, many people with mental illness do not want to take advantage of the service. All you need is a good strong dose of paranoid schizophrenia, and, when unwell, you’ll stay well away and avoid that medication. All of which saves our government millions of dollars a year.

Additionally, society would really prefer the mentally ill to just disappear and not bother them (the “not in my neighbourhood�? syndrome), so its easy for them not to notice that money is not being spent in nearly adequate amounts for the care of those who need it. Notice I am not saying “the care of those who want it�?. Those who want it often have a wonderful ability to mobilise many resources and supports which the others cannot or will not, because of their illness. And, in the case of our very busy Community Mental health team, those who want it are getting it, at the expense of those who need it but are avoiding it. We simply do not have the resources any longer.

Its no longer safe to do our job alone. What sane community nurse will walk into a house where there is someone holding a knife or gun, or a lump of timber. Of course we don’t know for sure that this is going to happen. But it has happened often enough for us to know that theres a strong possibility that it could. So we go visiting in twos. At least one will have a mobile phone to call for help and that one remains close to a door and escape at all times. Two-up visits are not always an efficient was of dealing with our customers, but under the circumstances, the only sane thing to do. Our top level managers will not provide us with a proper alternative.

The community at large complains about the number of mentally ill people who end up in gaol. I wonder where they want us to put them, because the government keeps closing hospital beds. We don’t have the luxury of a longstay ward… anywhere… in this state. Other services like the Sallies and St Vinnies and Richmond Fellowship and Centacare and New Horizons and many more who popped out of the woodwork and said “oh we’ll take ‘em�? have been given some money to look after those chronically ill people who cannot manage in mainstream society. Of course those services don’t actually employ people who are qualified… like (god forbid) psychiatric nurses (it would cost too much out of the $$$ per person that some of them get every year) and so our state run service STILL has to manage, without proper funding, alongside those NGOs.

All I can see is total, unmitigated mismanagement. The government has got it wrong and its just throwing good money after bad.

Total mainstreaming of mental health is both dangerous and stupid.