Budget cuts affect mental health funding

By Lucy Hannah, Thomas Nall, Samantha Aldenton

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Thomas Nall

Organisations like Lifeline continue to rely on donations and sales from their retail outlets for funding

Lifeline ‘picking up Government’s slack’

Seventy per-cent of callers to Lifeline’s telephone service that have a diagnosed mental illness, are not utilising any other form of ongoing mental health services. This is due to a range of reasons, mainly a lack of access to other services.

Allen Steward, Lifeline supervisor and counselor says, “what may possibly happen is that the overflow or the people who are unable to access mental health services that would be specific to their issue, might be falling back onto the lifeline service and therefore they’re getting some support but not the ideal support that they need. So in some respects Lifeline is picking up the slack for the Government”.

The average number of calls made to Lifeline in a single day is 1250. Fifty of those are in relation to suicide. If Lifeline did not exist these calls would go unanswered and more burden would be place on an already gasping mental health care industry and the families, friends and carers of people struggling with mental illness.

The Federal Government’s decision to reduce the number of Medicare subsidised appointments available to mental health patients could cause a strain on charity organisations like Sane and the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre (EPPIC), who provide group or individual counseling.

“The workload will definitely be passed on to Lifeline, if after building up a rapport and trust with a therapist as a part of the Better Access program, they [mental health patients] do not want to be treated in a large, group centre,” says Mr Steward.

“Lack of government funding is a very public problem and it is well known that the mental health industry struggles to gain funding … If you think about it, it’s quite an obvious but not a very easy subject for politicians to stand up for, particularly those preparing or campaigning for an election,” he says.

Mental health disorders continue to rise in Australia.

Data: Australian Bureau of Statistics, National Survey on Health and Wellbeing

An example given by Mr Steward of how the lack of appropriate funding for mental health care is affecting patients is the access to primary health services.

“If someone injures themselves then they can go to the emergency ward at the local hospital, but if someone has a psychotic episode there isn’t really a service available to them at all times of the day to provide immediate and necessary care. A mental health or crisis assessment and treatment unit may not be able to provide the treatment required. So in that case, people might have to just use the service of loved ones or call us, at Lifeline.”

“Lifeline is not, as many may think, completely government funded,” says the group’s national patron John Brogden. “Yet, for hundreds of thousands of Australians with a diagnosed mental health concision, Lifeline is literally the only form of help-seeking they access.” Lifeline and other charities providing mental health services rely on donations and profit from their stores for funding.

Story by Samantha Aldenton and Lucy Hannah

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