The results of a new survey paint a terrifying picture about the state of mental healthcare in NSW.
They’re four simple charts that should terrify you if you, or anyone you love, suffers from a mental illness.
For years doctors have complained about the serious underfunding of mental health services. The reason? Most people think it’s because performing more surgeries and cutting waiting times in emergency departments wins elections, while making sure someone with schizophrenia is properly supported and medicated in the community doesn’t.
Today Fairfax Media revealed that the situation is reaching crisis point.
Doctors around the state cheered when the government, just after it was elected, allowed local health authorities more control over health services in their area. But the downside of the decision was that some areas with particularly stretched budgets have looked to mental health services to find savings. It’s almost impossible to close a hospital bed without serious political ramifications, doctors say. But leaving a community health worker position unfilled? That’s much easier to get away with.
Doctors groups have become so worried by this trend they commissioned a survey, which more than half the state’s public hospital psychiatrists responded to, that paints a terrifying picture about the state of mental healthcare in NSW.
No, you are reading that right. HALF the doctors surveyed said resources were inadequate to meet demand. Another one-third called them “grossly inadequate”.
Insiders tell Fairfax Media it’s almost impossible to prove exactly how much money is “leaking” from mental health to other areas. But this graph tells part of the story. One-third of the doctors surveyed believe positions are deliberately held vacant, another 13 per cent say they were held open indefinitely. (Interestingly, the chart also hints at another big challenge facing health authorities: finding and recruiting staff qualified to do the job.)
Labor health spokesman Walt Secord says since coming into the health portfolio clinicians in the bush had raised cuts to mental health services as their No.1 concern.
“They are deeply troubled as they are powerless to help,” he said. “Local health districts – particularly rural and regional ones – are doing so by failing to fill positions or are replacing mental health workers with less qualified practitioners”.
Mr Secord links the issue to the $3 billion in “efficiency savings” and cuts implemented by the state government.
While the government has increased health spending in line with demand – and in fact instituted record spending in mental health – at the same time it has asked local districts to find some of their money through back-office savings and other efficiencies.
“Mental health services – particularly ones in rural and regional areas – have become the low hanging fruit for local health district officials forced to carry out the $3 billion in savage health cuts,” Mr Secord said. “Sadly, mental health services are the easiest to cut.”
This graph shows more than half the doctors surveyed think resources have gotten worse or significantly worse in the past year.
These charts are sure to terrify the NSW Ministry of Health, too.
Minister for Mental Health Jai Rowell has committed to spending $1.62 billion on mental health alone this year – and to try to fix the gaps left by many years of funding shortfalls under previous governments.
He has overseen, he says, a 32 per cent increase in mental health spending since Labor was in power.
But with nearly half the state’s psychiatrists dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with working in the public system, and a quarter likely or very likely to leave in the next year, he faces a big challenge.
The Ministry of Health knows the challenge of recruiting and keeping good quality staff into mental health care – an area that supports some of the most vulnerable, and sometimes challenging patients in the state.
They are promising to follow up the results, and speak directly with local health districts about any particular complaints.
“We take very seriously the concerns raised by psychiatrists who participated in the survey,” chief psychiatrist Murray Wright says.