Mad situation in mental health

The crisis in mental healthcare in public hospitals nationwide is a travesty that urgently must be addressed. The hundreds of millions of dollars being spent annually on locum psychiatrists to plug gaps in staffing in critically overloaded inpatient units in public hospitals are a false economy and a failure of leadership. The situation fails both those who urgently need psychiatric care and their families, who often are traumatised by the suffering of loved ones and the lack of somewhere to turn.

Through a series of reports, Cast Adrift, health editor Natasha Robinson has put a spotlight on an area that too often has been left in the shadows. It is extraordinary to learn that one in four staff specialist psychiatry positions in NSW public hospitals is unfilled. And that of about 100 staff specialist ­positions, 40 routinely are filled by locums who are paid between $2500 and $3000 a day. The situation is just as bad in the ACT, which in March recorded a public sector psychiatry workforce shortage of 26.5 per cent. Still more extraordinary is the news that two-thirds of the NSW workforce of 260 public hospital staff psychiatrists have handed in their resignations. Frontline workers are being squeezed by what many in the industry believe to be a misdirection of priorities by government. An editorial published in the journal Australasian Psychiatry has blamed a government and system more interested in addressing milder forms of anxiety and depression. This no doubt is in response to greater public awareness about the problems being experienced by a generation of young people who have been exposed to the bullying and stresses that exist online.

These are real concerns but not the only problem. And there is scepticism in the industry that the government’s current focus on mild anxiety and depression will produce worthwhile results. It is another story of unintended consequences, together with how scarce resources are being sucked into the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Both things are worsening what is an immediate crisis at the critical end of mental healthcare. This is where the priority focus must be.