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Coalition promises to tackle crisis in mental health
13 February 2005
WA Opposition Leader Colin Barnett has announced the Coalition's plan to rebuild mental health services in the state.
Speaking at the Liberal Party's official election campaign launch, Mr Barnett said there was a drastic shortage of beds and funding.
He claimed Labor also had combined funding for mental health with the general health budget - effectively hiding allocations for mental health services from public scrutiny, making it impossible to determine exactly how much was being provided.
"One in five Australians suffer from some form of mental illness. It affects not only sufferers, but the lives of families, friends, carers and the community as a whole," Mr Barnett said.
"The Coalition will take action to address what is a rapidly growing crisis. We will increase funding, we will provide more and better services close to where people live, we will support non-government mental health organisations and we will give regional mental health the attention it so drastically needs."
A Coalition Government will:
- Establish a separate Commission for Mental Health Services, to be headed by a dedicated Commissioner, to oversee the delivery of mental health services and facilities in Western Australia and ensure funding provisions are transparent and open to scrutiny and cannot be diverted into other health areas;
- Progressively increase mental health funding to ten per cent of the State's total health budget. Based on 2004-2005 budget figures, this will equate to a funding boost of $90 million;
- Undertake a comprehensive audit of Western Australia's existing mental health care services and facilities to ensure that all new initiatives address unmet need;
- Provide more dedicated mental health beds and services in community hospitals, including Joondalup Health Campus, Swan District and Murray District hospitals. Beds at Joondalup will increase to 50, about double those currently available. Provision will be made for more mental health beds and services at Swan District and Murray District hospitals as part of their upgrades;
- Provide more dedicated hospital and community beds, as well as services, to regional areas to address unacceptably high suicide rates in these areas;
- Provide a dedicated Psychiatric Emergency Team for each of Perth's three health services (an additional $2 million a year);
- Offer basic mental health training to all medical professionals, to ensure early identification and treatment of mental illness;
- Make child and adolescent mental health a key priority, in recognition of the fact that around 75 per cent of mental illness onsets before the age of 25 years;
- Provide $2 million a year to restore funding to non-government community based preventative programs cut by Labor, particularly those aimed at early intervention for children and adolescents;
- Implement targeted community awareness campaigns;
- Provide $1 million over four years in recurrent funding to Lifeline, to enable the organisation to continue to provide a suicide counselling hotline.
Contact Details
Health Services Union of Australia
hsu@hsu.net.au
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