‘These people are suicidal’: Mental health crisis deepens, doctors speak out
Fears for a looming mental health crisis is deepening with professionals cancelling appointments, retreating to cities and leaving patients with even less face-to-face treatment in regional Qld. SPECIAL REPORT
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There are fears the mental health crisis in regional Queensland is getting worse with reports professionals are going back to the cities, leaving patients with even less face-to-face appointments.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Whitsundays has a higher rate of suicide and self harm than the average in the country.
The age-standardised suicide death rate at the national level was of 12.0 per 100,000 people while the Whitsunday region sat at 17.4 per 100,000 in 2021.
A majority of mental health services are accessed via Telehealth in remote areas, with patients only rarely seeing professionals face-to-face.
An Australiasan Psychiatry 2022 study concluded that those in rural and remote Queensland “strongly prefer-in-person mental health care to telehealth.”
But even with telehealth as an option, Whitsundays practicians are saying access to services is not guaranteed.
FOUR OUT OF FIVE HAD NOT RECEIVED CARE
Bowen disability support provider Stella Life Faileen’s chief executive Faileen James said four of her patients who were treated for “clinical” mental health conditions had not received the care they needed from Mackay Hospital and Health Service.
She said appointments with psychiatrists were being cancelled because of a lack of staff, with fears the lack of treatment could lead to terrible situations.
“These are people with serious mental health clinical issues, we are talking bipolar, schizophrenia,” she said. “These are people that are suicidal.”
“But what, there’s only one psychiatrist in North Queensland, they can’t do telehealth with backup?”
MHHS Service Acting Operations Director Division of Mental Health, Alcohol and Other Drugs Stephanie Zweers said the hospital had experienced “a high rate of staff illness and unplanned leave in the Whitsundays” leading to appointments getting cancelled.
“I can assure our mental health consumers that they are not forgotten and that we have a plan and appropriate clinical experts in place to provide their care,” Ms Zweers said.
Ms James said cancelled appointments was only one problem, with long waiting periods for NDIS applications, or the impossibility to get in touch with her clients’ case managers.
She said most people she had tried to reach out to did not work in the unit anymore.
“They move on within weeks,” she said about the hospital staff.
Ms James has sent complaints to MHHS, to Queensland Health and to the office of the Health Minister but has not received any response.
“I’ve got a nursing background, I’ve been a nurse for 30 years, (...) and I have never seen the health system so bad as what I’m experiencing with these clients in the Whitsundays,” she said.
“At the end of the day, I have several clients that are not getting the treatment that they deserve.”
Ms Zweers said the hospital was focusing on treating mental health patients who were “severely unwell”.
“There are a range of other mental health services that complement the public service provided by Mackay HHS,” she said.
CALL FOR REMOTE INCENTIVES FOR STAFF
A Bowen psychologist has sent a letter to Health Minister Mark Butler revealing his four staff would leave the region by early 2024, creating a gap in mental health coverage for the area.
Dr Corey Lane who owns private practice Adaptive Strategies said his coverage of the region provided the much needed face-to-face appointments to clients in remote areas.
“I desperately do not wish for my multi-clinician regional psychology clinic to cease operating in the Whitsundays,” he wrote in the letter.
Dr Lane said he was not able to attract staff because he could not “compete with the incentives and pay offered by metropolitan areas”.
He said the government should consider making private practices eligible to government-funded remote workforce attraction schemes, as they were the main providers of mental health care to the regions.
The Australian Productivity Commission 2023 report confirmed the allied health services, which include mental health services were “mainly delivered in the private sector”.
Dr Lane said programs to consider were the National Mental Health Pathways to Practice (PILOT) Program, the Rural Health
Multidisciplinary Training (RHMT) Program, and the Workforce Incentives Program.
Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Emma McBride said in 2023-24, the government spent an estimated $7.1 billion on mental health and suicide prevention and would focus on getting better access for people who wish to study mental health.
“The Government acknowledges there are challenges in the current supply and distribution of the mental health workforce, and the associated impact that this has on service delivery,” she said.
The Australian government Better Access initiative provides 10 free counselling sessions to citizens, which was expanded to 20 during the Covid pandemic and returned to 10 in December 2022 after an evaluation of the scheme concluded that workforce distribution issues contributed to “relatively poorer access for consumers in rural areas”.
QUEENSLAND NEEDS 500 MENTAL HEALTH BEDS
A Courier-Mail analysis shows more than half of the Queensland population in regional areas live with less than 30 mental health beds per 100,000, considered the “bare minimum” by experts.
Some areas, like the MHHS region, have as few as 19.45.
Burdekin MP Dale Last has urged government for “action” to deliver on their promises on the provision of mental health services in regional Queensland.
“While Queensland needs at least 500 mental health beds, the state government has delivered eight at a cost of $200m each,” Mr Last said.
“On a per capita basis, the number of mental health beds is lower than the national average and the 20 new beds announced in the recent state budget are a world away from people in Bowen and Collinsville who need help.
“The fact that the suicide rate in remote and very remote regions is twice the rate in the big cities should be ringing alarm bells in the Prime Minister’s and the Premier’s office,”
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