MENTAL HEALTH Forthediscerning

Patient

Despite decades of commissions, reforms, and government investment, rates of mental illness in Australia are not decreasing. Even before Covid-19, one out of every four of us was on track to experience mental illness. There is little agreement regarding the reasons for this inertia, but it’s commonly attributed to the healthcare system.

If you have ever needed mental healthcare, you’ll be familiar with the Kafkaesque endurance marathon of phone calls and appointment begging required to find help. In a world where psychologists charge used-car amounts of money, patients who argue for better treatment are still labelled as entitled snowflakes. I got through the system…but not everyone does.

The mental health system tends to guess at problems, implement solutions, decide they’re ineffective, rinse and repeat, while learning very little about the underlying causes. This wasteful approach would be unthinkable In any other industry, yet despite the fact that lives at stake, there’s a deep reluctance to transform the system.

$90 billion for nuclear submarines is chump change but according to Mark Butler, ten subsidised psychology appointments per year instead of 20 is clogging up the system Personally, I’m excited to get back to day drinking and doom-scrolling as a substitute for professional help

But what if improving healthcare is a red herring? The language is relevant here: mental *illness* is framed as a personal issue with a straightforward medical solution. What if "the world” is also part of the problem? Triggers that exaggerate mental health crises do not neatly reside inside the skulls of a few unlucky individuals, but also come from public life Impossible workloads, education systems made brittle from unforgiving competitive rigidity, and flat-out discrimination make a perfect petri dish of mental illness stimulants

There’s this parable about a cliff where people kept falling from the top, and every time an ambulance was dispatched to treat the injured. The crisis only ended when the community built a strong fence that stopped people from falling in the first place Mental illness will always need healthcare Taking personal responsibility through medication, therapy, exercise, diet, and sleep is vital But you know what else is needed? A strong fucking fence

Public institutions can choose to minimise and mitigate how they trigger stress, or they can remain bottom feeders, ploughing through the psychological health of those they encounter Seeing the larger causes helps people realise that mental illness is not a personal failing, and shows that they could change if we work together to build a fence Systemic change won’t just help the one in four people in your life who are mentally ill It helps everyone