Men’s Mental Health Missing Out

The Australian Federal Government subsidises a mental health counselling scheme, ‘Better Access’ which provides 6, 12, up to 18 sessions of subsidised counselling to all eligible citizens. By ‘eligible’, that means that they must first jump through the hoop of proving that they are mentally ill to a general practitioner. Once past that hurdle, they can then get the minimum amount of sessions but then have to beg for any more. What this scheme has resulted in is, predictably, an influx of the worried well from the leafy parts of town, who can both afford to pay the not insubstantial subsidised fee (often more than $100 per session) and who can benefit from having their paper clip problems soothed across the brief space of 6 or so sessions (see link, below). That means that those people whose mental health needs are complex, entrenched and not amenable to the short-term therapy offered under Better Access, miss out. It’s a dirty little secret and so not much discussed in Australia that we happily consign tens of thousands of our citizens every year to the trash can. The adult survivors of child abuse, for example, of whom I am one, must suffer the legacy of our abuse and the complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) with which we suffer without any accessible therapeutic services. If the huge and ever-growing bucket of money that is poured into Better Access was re-directed to provide means-tested, therapeutic services for those people who have the most complex mental health needs, then that would result in markedly better outcomes. As it stands, and true to form, the Australian Federal Government is sitting on an evaluation report into Better Access (sitting on such reports is a tragic hallmark of the Rudd Labor Government), and so without that evaluation report, we cannot even begin to wonder if that scheme has been successful beyond soothing grief over a bald patch on your poodle or whether to upgrade to this year’s Merc.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/mental-health-bill-hits-15b-20100129-n48j.html