SA’s peak health bodies call out mental health as top state budget priority

The mental health effects of Covid are still coming, experts say, and the state government must throw significant dollars at a broken system on June 22 to keep it afloat.

Covid’s mental health “third wave” is yet to reach its peak, the Australian Medical Association SA branch has warned.

The peak doctors’ group – together with a coalition of expert groups – wants mental health to be a top priority in the state government’s financial planning for 2021/22 and beyond. The coalition is calling for a significant, long-term funding commitment for mental health support in this month’s state budget.

It says the most critical investment needed is 136 extra psychiatric beds.

AMA SA president Dr Michelle Atchison said psychiatrists and GPs across SA were still struggling to cope with mental health demand 15 months after the pandemic broke. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

AMA SA president Dr Michelle Atchison said the third wave of the pandemic in SA – its impact on mental health – was yet to be fully felt.

Experts first warned of mental health being the pandemic’s hidden “third wave” in October last year when The Advertiser and Sunday Mail launched the Let’s Talk campaign to raise the issue.

Dr Atchison said fears of a lockdown in SA, based on what had unfolded in Victoria, as well as anxiety over the vaccination rollout were contributing factors.

She said psychiatrists and GPs across SA were still struggling to cope with mental health demand 15 months after the pandemic broke and that the rolling impact of Covid-19 on mental health would be felt for years to come. Dr Atchison said current psychiatry wait times for new patients were at least up to November, leaving those in critical need little alternative but to bottleneck in emergency departments or seek help from swamped GPs as they waited for mental health beds.

“The lack of mental health beds is effectively impacting the whole health system and must be addressed first and foremost,” Dr Atchison said.

She said a “significant investment” in mental health services in the June 22 state budget was needed to specifically redress the state’s acute psychiatric bed ratio of 33 per 100,000 people – 20 per cent below the national average.

Dr Paul Furst, chairman of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists SA Branch, a member of the coalition, said fixing the mental health system “should be a top priority for the government … (and) unless there is a significant investment in bed capacity, the state’s mental health system will remain doomed to fail”.