Page 3706 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 23 November 2022
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Canberra Health Services, for example, provides a range of screening and intervention services targeting the leading causes of death and disability in men, including mental health assessment and treatment, cardiovascular function assessment, and provision of cancer screening diagnosis and treatment.
Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT provides screening and treatment for sexually transmittable infections and bloodborne viruses and supports men around issues of sexual dysfunction. Canberra Sexual Health Centre provides a number of programs that look after the sexual health and wellbeing of men, including screening for sexually transmitted infections, treatment, health education and health promotion.
Meridian provides a range of support, prevention, testing and treatment services targeting gay and bisexual men who have sex with men, particularly those at high risk of HIV acquisition, including men who have sex with male casual partners and those who frequent sex-on-premises venues.
I get the feeling that this is not what Ms Castley means when she talks about men’s health; nevertheless, it is critically important. More in line, probably, with Ms Castley’s focus, I can assure her that under our research strategy we have invested $1.2 million in targeted research into cancer and $160,000 in cardiac rehabilitation, which, as Ms Castley’s motion highlights, are significant risk factors for men.
Ms Castley’s motion also highlights the far higher rates of suicide in men compared to women. This is, sadly, not only a national but an international experience. The data indicates that approximately 75 per cent of suicide deaths in the ACT and nationally in 2021 were men and that suicide is the leading cause of death for Australians between the ages of 15 and 44. Given our small population size locally, our data does fluctuate from year to year, but generally our rates are similar to the national ones for our population size as well. Nevertheless, more needs to be done, and significant and coordinated work is being focused on this task. It is clearly a gendered issue that requires resources, focus and attention across governments, and that is why the ACT’s Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan 2019-24, strategic priority 6, reduced self-harm and suicide prevention, has a priority population that includes men.
Importantly, the government and our partners at Capital Health Network did not just leave it at men—half of our population. We know that this headline figure does not tell the whole story, which is why, for example, the plan is also prioritising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, because we know that all men do not have the same risk. Indeed, the risk nationally for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men for suicide was double the whole population rate. I repeat: double. That is why the government has invested in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander specific suicide prevention programs. This evidence base is also why we fund the Way Back Support Service to provide follow-up to people after they have attempted suicide, because the evidence also identifies this as a priority population.
Minister Davidson will speak in greater depth, I am sure, about the mental health of men in the ACT, but I would like to highlight that the ACT government does consistently invest where the evidence indicates, and where the evidence identifies a priority population. For example, research indicates that it is important for mental
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