Page 208 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 14 February 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
We have Canberrans with mental health problems unable to navigate an impossibly complex, impersonal, one-size-fits-all, bureaucratic system. Instead of having an office for mental health, we continue to suffer inadequate facilities that cannot meet demand. There are staff shortages across the board. There is a chronic lack of mental health specialists, such as psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health nurses, and we cannot meet that demand. There is a particularly chronic shortage of specialists in paediatric and adolescent mental health, an issue which my colleague Mrs Kikkert will address.
Mr Rattenbury is sitting over there; he has been sniggering and rolling his eyes, as is his wont, at everything I say. I refer the Assembly to the 2018 report on government services. Here are some of the things that the ROGS for 2018 has to say about the state of mental health services in the ACT. In 2015-16, the ACT had the highest proportion of people in Australia using specialised public mental health services. For 2015-16, the ACT was the only jurisdiction that did not publish data on the proportion of people discharged from a public hospital psychiatric inpatient unit who had a significant improvement in their clinical mental health outcomes.
So one of the first things we know from ROGS is that we do not know. We do not know, because of the failings in the health system. But some things we do know. Over the past 10 years, the number of patient days per 1,000 people for admitted acute care mental health patients has been increasing, from 48.5 to 64.9. Yet the number of beds per 100,000 people has actually fallen, from 20.7 to 18.6.
This is underpinned not by ROGS data but by answers to questions on notice provided during the annual report hearings that show that for 2016-17, the average bed occupancy rate at the adult mental health unit was 105 per cent. At the adult mental health unit, according to the answer submitted by Mr Rattenbury to question on notice No 56, the average bed occupancy was 105 per cent. And the unit was at capacity, or near or above capacity, for most of the year. This is a problem of addressing the needs of the people of the ACT. Other ROGS data showed that the full-time-equivalent direct care staff per 100,000 people had risen only marginally, from 28 per 100,000 people to 32. This was well below the national average of 50.
Members who were present during the annual report hearings last year might recall the story of Jack, not his real name, whose study I took to the annual reports hearings with the agreement of Jack’s family and Jack himself. Jack descended into a state of crisis, having to go interstate to receive acute treatment and care. My colleague Mrs Kikkert, I understand, will speak on this matter as well. There was another patient recorded on ABC Online in October last year who had to travel to Victoria to receive help.
Recent media reports have assessed the minister’s assurances about the office for mental health as something worth waiting for. The thing is that the people of Canberra have been waiting and waiting. And all the time they are waiting for the consultation paper, for the conversation to be concluded, they are also waiting for services to be joined up, for there to be enough practitioners here to meet their needs so that they do not have to travel interstate at a time when they are most vulnerable.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video