Mentally ill missing out: chief
Mental Health Commissioner Tim Marney has revealed the huge extent to which WA’s $707.1 million mental health budget is misdirected or inadequate, causing the conditions of many of the State’s 400,000 people with mental illness to worsen.
Mr Marney said only 20 per cent of demand for mental health support in the community, and just over 40 per cent of need for mental health beds in the community, was currently being met in the State.
Only 80 per cent of the demand for acute mental health hospital beds was being met, so 20 per cent of those in most need of help for severe mental illness were missing out.
“So what this means is if someone doesn’t get community support at the time they need it, where they need it, then they are going to deteriorate and they will need a bed,” Mr Marney said yesterday.
“If there’s not a community bed there, they are going to deteriorate further and they are going to show up at ED and they are going to need a hospital bed.”
The former WA under-treasurer said the cost of a hospital bed was about $1234 per day, compared with $453 for a community mental health bed.
“This is not just what’s in it for the individual, this is a basic business cost, an economic no-brainer,” he said.
Mr Marney said 40 per cent of mental health resources were currently spent on hospital beds and this needed to be reduced to 30 per cent.
Only 8 per cent of the funding was currently spent on community mental health support, which Mr Marney said needed to increase to 20 per cent.
He said the State Government’s draft WA Mental Health, Alcohol, Drug and Other Services plan, now under public consultation, was entirely geared to shifting resources to increase the supply of community services.
Jenny Allen, chief executive of WA not-for-profit group Youth Focus which works to stop youth suicide, also spoke at yesterday’s Perth launch of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia’s research report on addressing entrenched disadvantage.
Ms Allen said the Government and the mental health sector poorly used the resources available.
“We have a mental health system that does not prioritise people’s needs. Our mental health system is fragmented and responds far too late in many instances. We don’t look at the whole person, just the immediate problem they present with,” she said.
