Page 4105 - Week 13 - Thursday, 6 December 2007
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therapy is one of the clinical professions that provide senior, experienced mental health clinicians to the service, including the crisis assessment and treatment team. Mental Health ACT provides core training to all clinicians, including occupational therapists, with respect to the mental health act, mental health state examination, risk assessment and crisis response, as well as suicide assessment and management.
Mental Health ACT, under the direction of the Chief Psychiatrist, is developing a mental health officers handbook to guide mental health officers’ practice. Occupational therapists are currently not able to be appointed as a mental health officer under the act, which is currently limited to a ministerial appointment of mental health nurses, psychologists or social workers. The opposition is satisfied that it is a necessary amendment.
Broadly, these amendments seek to provide better health outcomes for consumers and we will be supporting the bill.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (5.13): The Greens will be supporting the bill as well. I would like to thank Ms Gallagher and her staff for the briefing they arranged for me and my staff with the Chief Psychiatrist and officers of Mental Health, and for her office’s ongoing efforts to keep me updated and informed regarding this bill. The amendments were well explained and the staff were helpful. The bill is non-controversial and the amendments are aimed at improving the arrangements for the transfer and care of the mentally ill, particularly with regard to interstate transfer.
During the briefing we were advised that a review of the whole act is due in the coming years, and that consultation on this review with the mental health community continues. Nonetheless, I commend the government for making small but beneficial amendments to the act while waiting for the larger review because this assists in keeping the treatment of the mentally ill on the agenda, and making sure that it is as good as it possibly can be. That is a good reason for supporting the bill, as far as I am concerned.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Minister for Health, Minister for Children and Young People, Minister for Disability and Community Services, Minister for Women) (5.14), in reply: I thank members for their contributions to the debate and also for acknowledging, as I would like to do, the work that my staff and officers in the department have put into briefing members of the opposition and the cross-bench. I also thank members of the Assembly for dealing with the legislation swiftly. It was introduced in the previous sitting week with a request for a turnaround in the following week, so I do appreciate members’ cooperation.
The objective of the Mental Health (Treatment and Care) Amendment Bill is to make technical amendments to the Mental Health (Treatment and Care) Act that will better express the intention of the act in several sections where some confusion has arisen. The title of section 5 of the act currently reads “Persons not to be regarded as mentally dysfunctional”. Section 5 of the act is a very important section because it lays out the principles for what can be regarded as mental illness and mental dysfunction. People cannot be regarded as having these conditions merely because they do not conform to the expectations of others around religious, political or philosophical beliefs, opinions
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