Baillieu and Mental Health
Well, the flashbacks are back. My guts are churning from memories I don't even want to relive.
A couple of comments about Mr Baillieu's plans for a new mental health system in Victoria.
The Family Resource Centers will not make up any of the difference. They will be too tied up with the Family Courts and legal system. The politicization of the FRCs is already apparently in place.
It's a political statement to pretend that the young people will be the largest group using these programs. With a decade of neglect, there is a massive unanswered need in the adult community, particularly the elderly and disabled. Mr Baillieu is talking to the social stigma here. It is long past time Australia realized and dealt with a decade of neglect by the Howard administration.
A patient-centric model, where the patients are taught how to deal with the affects and symptoms of their illness is best.
Community Mental Health clinics quickly become overwhelmed if they try to be mini-hospitals. They are best used for evaluation (3 days), self internment (by the patient) for protection, and group therapy.
Effective and efficient care for the mentally ill means teaching those involved -- patients, friends and family, and carers -- how to manage the illness. At the end of the day, it is the patient who must manage the illness, not anyone else.
Programs such as California's "Intensive Day Treatment" have been enormously successful in teaching patients how to manage their mental illness.
Treatment Centers depend on the services
What is really needed is a series of programs that teach those with mental health issues to manage their illness, and their medications. Similar programs in the US have been designed to run at least 3 months. Some institutionalized or addicted patients may require longer training.
Offering treatment centers is good, but if they only function as pill pushers, they will be largely a waste of money. That sort of naive treatment is already available from GPs. (The stupidity of the "Extended Sessions" comes to mind. At the end, the GP just gave the patient new drugs -- usually whatever was being pushed by drug companies at the time.)
Teaching a person to manage a mental illness is how to deliver effective treatment and cut costs.
Psychotropic Medications
Patients must learn that not all medications are effective. In fact, some medications can worsen the illness they seek to treat.
Patients, their families and carers, need to learn that psychotropic medications take weeks, sometimes a few months, to become effective. And then may prove to be wrong for that patient.
That means running from one center or doctor after another is only putting all involved at greater risk.
And that self-medicating with alcohol or other drugs will only make things worse overall.
Managing the Symptoms
Patients need to learn that they are not completely helpless when faced with a mental illness.
They, and those close to them, can learn:
Exercise is only part of the answer. Forcing a person back to work to suffer without any right to complain, is brutal and cruel. Peer pressure is only common brutality with the excuse of a mob.
Ya think?
A couple of comments about Mr Baillieu's plans for a new mental health system in Victoria.
TED Baillieu will spend $226 million on tackling mental health problems if he becomes premier.What Ted Baillieu is proposing is a good start. Although the system will need far more Community Mental Health centres.
...Speaking at the Melbourne Press Club yesterday, Mr Baillieu said a Liberal government would also set up:
FOUR community-based care centres as an alternative to hospital treatment.
THREE youth mental health centres to look after those aged 12 to 25.
MOBILE teams to provide at-home mental health care.
SEPARATE mental health units at five major hospital emergency departments.
"Mental illness can no longer remain a hidden disease, an affliction compounded by social stigma," Mr Baillieu said.
Illicit drug use was contributing to the mental illness problem among young people, he said.
The Family Resource Centers will not make up any of the difference. They will be too tied up with the Family Courts and legal system. The politicization of the FRCs is already apparently in place.
It's a political statement to pretend that the young people will be the largest group using these programs. With a decade of neglect, there is a massive unanswered need in the adult community, particularly the elderly and disabled. Mr Baillieu is talking to the social stigma here. It is long past time Australia realized and dealt with a decade of neglect by the Howard administration.
A patient-centric model, where the patients are taught how to deal with the affects and symptoms of their illness is best.
Community Mental Health clinics quickly become overwhelmed if they try to be mini-hospitals. They are best used for evaluation (3 days), self internment (by the patient) for protection, and group therapy.
Effective and efficient care for the mentally ill means teaching those involved -- patients, friends and family, and carers -- how to manage the illness. At the end of the day, it is the patient who must manage the illness, not anyone else.
Programs such as California's "Intensive Day Treatment" have been enormously successful in teaching patients how to manage their mental illness.
Treatment Centers depend on the services
What is really needed is a series of programs that teach those with mental health issues to manage their illness, and their medications. Similar programs in the US have been designed to run at least 3 months. Some institutionalized or addicted patients may require longer training.
Offering treatment centers is good, but if they only function as pill pushers, they will be largely a waste of money. That sort of naive treatment is already available from GPs. (The stupidity of the "Extended Sessions" comes to mind. At the end, the GP just gave the patient new drugs -- usually whatever was being pushed by drug companies at the time.)
Teaching a person to manage a mental illness is how to deliver effective treatment and cut costs.
Psychotropic Medications
Patients must learn that not all medications are effective. In fact, some medications can worsen the illness they seek to treat.
Patients, their families and carers, need to learn that psychotropic medications take weeks, sometimes a few months, to become effective. And then may prove to be wrong for that patient.
That means running from one center or doctor after another is only putting all involved at greater risk.
And that self-medicating with alcohol or other drugs will only make things worse overall.
Managing the Symptoms
Patients need to learn that they are not completely helpless when faced with a mental illness.
They, and those close to them, can learn:
- that mental illness does not mean complete disability in many cases;
- most mental illness has cycles, and those cycles can be managed -- sometimes even controlled or lessened;
- cycles can be recognized by milder symptoms, which may allow the person to do things which may lessen or avoid the cycle;
- certain activities, such as aerobic exercise, B vitamins to help the body deal with stress, and other things specific to the disease and/or person can help;
Exercise is only part of the answer. Forcing a person back to work to suffer without any right to complain, is brutal and cruel. Peer pressure is only common brutality with the excuse of a mob.
(from the Herald Sun 50/50 column, page 18)
VICTORIANS are fed up with the Bracks Government's social engineering and kowtowing to minority interest groups. All this time at the expense of real issues -- education, transport, law and order, road safety, water, health and government transparency. -- Peter Braustch, Baxter
Ya think?
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