Aged suffer lack of mental health help
Reported May 01, 2010We Are now living longer and, as long as we can get all the so-called lifestyle illnesses under control, we may well live pretty much forever.
That is the promise and the hope. And while life by its nature is appealing (considering the alternative), what is the good of it if, in our autumn and winter years, our minds are sick and our brains are feeble?
That is slated to happen for many of us, given the “poor cousin” status of mental health, particularly for the elderly, in the health debate.
The mental-health situation for older people is dire and promises only to disintegrate further under pressure.
And last week’s health-system rejig and overhaul seem unlikely to drastically improve things for oldies and future oldies.
The Federal Government last week put forward its planned funding for mental health, announcing a $174 million investment in mental health services (out of $5 billion in health-funding initiatives), most of which will be pitched at common disorders such as anxiety and depression and youth support services.
Those in the know say it is far from enough. The University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Research Institute executive director Ian Hickie said he was “dumbfounded” at the paltry amount and demanded that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd explain why mental health was to be so neglected.
The sector was in danger of imploding, he said.
There was too high a demand on services, too few people to help and too little money to fund what was in place, let alone carry any improvements.
Human beings have never been a case of body or mind. Even in ancient times, they were recognised as an indivisible pair. It is, therefore, more primitive than the beginning of time to act like mental health is physical health’s distant relation.
The Australian of the Year and professor at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Youth Mental Health, Patrick McGorry, said this week that two-thirds of the four million Australians who suffer mental ill-health this year would not gain access to care, compared with one-in-10 people who suffer physical ill-health.
And even though mental illness itself is neglected, there is a pecking order of treatment within it. Few would argue that older people are at the bottom of the heap.
Statistics from national depression initiative beyondblue show that about 10 to 15 per cent of older people in the community suffer from depression, but as many as 35 per cent of aged-care facility residents suffer similarly. That figure is embarrassing and atrocious.
Fresh in our minds are the faces of the ageing returned servicemen and women, whose valour and roles were honoured this week at Anzac Day ceremonies. Although some wore the physical residue of their experience, without doubt every one of them carries the mental scars.
But like everything in Australia when it comes to addressing mental-health issues, there is a long march ahead.
Increased levels of depression and mental illness have incorrectly and devastatingly been accepted as a normal part of ageing.
It is almost as if getting older means having suffered losses, knocks and blows in life, depression is an inevitable human response.
But depression is not a normal part of ageing. It should not be accepted and accommodated. Older people who are depressed need help just as those in their younger years do.
But the problem is only going to get worse unless it takes its rightful, serious place in health discussions.
The number of Australians aged between 65 and 84 will double over the next 40 years. While a quarter of the Budget is spent on health now, half will have to be put in that basket in 40 years. The framework needs to be laid now to prevent health problems, including mental-health issues.
We are not alone with this problem and need not look far for strategies.
In Japan two years ago, a quarter of the population was over 65. In another 20 years, one-in-three Japanese will be seniors. But Japan is also having a mental-health crisis, particularly among the elderly.
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare announced last week it was formulating plans to add a check for depression to yearly medical examinations companies must provide to their workers. The idea is to pick up problems early, before they mushroom in old age.
If depression is rife in Japan, the nation that is the poster girl for what good health care, diet and medicine can do, surely it is worth noting its monitoring and early-detection strategies. Its strategy is to find ways to help, not ways to accept mental illness as a part of life.
Japan is also taking a front-foot approach to its hideous suicide rate, pledging to reduce the country’s 30,000 suicide deaths a year.
The nation’s collective heart is breaking from the devastation of so many lives needlessly lost and it wants to help people at risk to find hope.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that we lost 2191 people to suicide in 2008.
It is the 10th leading cause of death in men and the 14th leading cause overall.
If suicide is the worst possible result of a neglected mental-health system, we could be in for a lot more grieving.
There seems no choice. Mental health and physical health must be dealt with and funded together.
There has been too much hurt and sickness in our elderly allowed already.
