Liberals’ vow on mental health facility with adolescent unit planned for next year

AN inpatient adolescent mental health unit will open the Royal Hobart Hospital next year, four years after a Coroner recommended it be done.

Health Minister Michael Ferguson. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

AN inpatient adolescent mental health unit will open at the Royal Hobart Hospital next year, more than four years after a coroner recommended it be done.

In State Parliament on Tuesday, Opposition Leader Rebecca White questioned the Government about the case of a 15-year-old girl who had been confined in the adult mental health ward for six months.

Tasmania has long been the only state in the nation without such a dedicated inpatient adolescent mental health facility.

The establishment of a such a unit was first recommended by the Health Department in 2002 and its absence has been lamented since.

In 2009, Premier Lara Giddings — then health minister — promised to establish a unit “as a priority project” within 12 months.

In 2015, Coroner Olivia McTaggart made a recommendation that a unit be established, when inquiring into the suicide deaths of six young people.

“The expert evidence overwhelmingly supports the need for an inpatient facility for the assessment and treatment of adolescents who present with serious mental health issues,” she said in her findings.

Health Minister Michael Ferguson said a unit would be opened “next year”.

Labor health spokeswoman Sarah Lovell said too little was being done.

“We know this minister has no plan to address this crisis right now. He keeps referring to their plan to open child adolescent mental health beds in the hospitals, which we of course welcome, but those beds are a number of years away from being open and operational.

“It still requires the building to be completed. There’s a commissioning process and then those beds need to be staffed. So that is still a number of years away. What we know is that right now we have young people in desperate need of mental health services, including a teenage girl in the hospital right now who has been there for six months.”

Mr Ferguson said Labor’s failure to complete the facility over its 16 years in office did not put it in a good position to criticise him for his failure to complete the job in four years in office to date.

“Labor has no credibility on mental health,” he said.

“They had 16 years in Government to build adolescent mental health facilities in Tasmania — but they comprehensively failed,” he said.