Mental Health Perspective in Queensland - Essay Example

Mental Health Perspective in Queensland Customer Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name Insert Date Here (Day, Month, Year) Mental health problem is a very sensitive issue involving not only doctors but also medical officers including psychiatrists, psychiatric trainees, medical junior staff, psychiatric nurses, health professionals, social workers, psychologists and other occupational therapists. Mental disorder is much more prevalent in Australia than any other kind of group or depressive disorders. Certain studies found the fact that many people with mental disorder problem do not receive treatment at all and also treatment services are not delivered in very efficient and effective manner. To overcome the burden of the mental disorder problems requires the necessity of cost effective preventive measures, early diagnose and formulation of appropriate treatment process. High cases of mental health disorders or depression cause deep social and economic burden on the whole community with the direct cost incurred on the treatment estimated to be around 500 million dollars per year. It was found that around one million adults and 100, 000 young people suffer from depression every year all over the world with one in every five people having an episode of depression at least one time in their whole life. According to the National Survey of Mental Health and Well being of 1997 report in Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1998, 18 per cent of adults suffered from mental disorder within the period of 12 months. Out of these only 38% (11% of the total) were able to seek help from health service providers. (Beck, Online) Historically European colonisation had been blamed for the destruction of the traditional lifestyles of First Australians, which had placed “Indigenous Australians at high risk of developing health and mental health problems, in particular depression, anxiety, self-harm, and excessive alcohol and other psychoactive substance use” (McKendrick, 2007, p. 95) Management in the depressive disorder in primary care is increasingly expanding and has been identified as a main priority for general practice. Still many primary health care providers are faced by many hurdles in their process of providing primary health care. Cultural differences between General Practitioners (GPs) and other mental health care service providers cause coordination and communication problems between them. There are also differences between their different level of skills and their aptitude in delivering mental health care. Besides, specialists have to face lack of clear guidelines and provisions while following referral pathways, on many occasions they get very little support from specialists, and also have to face the burden of lack of time and very less remuneration in lieu of their services. The most crucial factor for delivering quality care to the mental health patients lies in their ability to create proper coordination and link between public care providers and private primary care and specialist services. Many steps are being taken at the national, state, and local level to find out different ways to over come these barriers including the Better Outcomes in Mental Health Care Initiative (BOiMHCI) and the General Practice and Psychiatry Partnerships Program (GPAPP). (Beck, Online). The Government also took an initiative to form The Queensland Framework for Primary Mental Health Care for attaining adequate coordination between Divisions of General Practice, Queensland Health, GPs, Australian Government, consumers and careers, Department of Health and Ageing, non-government organisations and professional peak bodies e.g. Australian Psychological Society (APS) and Australian Association of Social Work (AASW). (Beck, Online) The following paper aims to provide insight into the philosophical, policies, ethical and legislative framework of mental health services in Queensland. The paper will also address the extent to which training in the psychosocial interventions contributed in the development of the mental health field and role multidisciplinary team plays and inter agency collaborates in the local area. There is also provision in The Mental Health Act 2000 of Queensland allowing the initial assessments on involuntary bases, giving authorization for involuntary treatment, reviewing of treatment on involuntary bases and ensuring rights of patients. The act also explains different processes for providing mental health care to mentally ill criminals or other offenders who are in custody. (The State of Queensland (Queensland Health), 2009) The Queensland Plan for Mental Health 2007-2017 (‘the Plan’) provides Government’s plan to make number of reforms and bring in improvements in the mental health service during the period of next ten years. The plan forces upon the government, non government organizations and private sector to work in coordination by bringing in change and providing consumer focused mental health services that can promote mental health and well being of the people, decrease the mental health problems and mental illness, decrease the effect of mental illness on the overall personality of individuals, families and the community, promote recovery and build up resilience and encourage the mentally ill people to live with dignity and fully participate in the community activities and society. (The State of Queensland (Queensland Health), 2008) During the year 2007-2008, the State Budget recorded $528.8 million to be allocated to bring in the improvement in the Queensland mental health system in next four years. This level of funding considered to be highest in the history of mental health shows the deep commitment of Government towards providing best and quality services in every form possible to mentally ill patients and their family members and caretakers. (The State of Queensland (Queensland Health), 2008) Providing access to the quality education and training to mental health professionals will bring in the improvement in community’s access towards services and finally will add to the improvement in the mental health of all Queenslanders. It is very important to understand various requirements and necessities needed to provide mental health services item numbers, care planning, referrals and also the ways mental health professionals could work with each other and in coordination which is very imperative to treat the patients in the most effective way for e.g. the General Practice Mental Health Standards Collaboration (GPMHSC) has the main responsibility for maintaining the education and training standards linked with the best results in Mental Health Care and Better Access to Mental Health Care initiatives. (General Practice Queensland, 2009) It is said that the international training in mental health along with the political science, psychiatry, psychology, religious etc is based on certain set criteria like training should address different cultural dimensions, should be culturally sensitive and meet the underlying values. (Weine, et al., 2002) It is quite true that no single service or intervention policies or procedures could bring in good results or outcomes; therefore it has become mandatory to provide the services in a multi disciplinary manner. Mental health workers often provide treatment and support to the workers with the help of multidisciplinary teams. These teams constitute professionals from different clinical disciplines like psychiatrist, psychologists, medical doctors, social workers, nurses and occupational therapists among others. Besides, there are many non-clinical professionals who are specially appointed by the Queensland Health Mental Health Services to deliver more support to the patient’s zeal and his carer. These are especially Consumer Consultant and Carer Consultants. (The State of Queensland (Queensland Health), 2008) This multi disciplinary team consists of two or more members from each of their professional group and expertise. Teams for general adult psychiatry patients generally have responsibility towards their own area and sector, whereas other teams encompass wider areas including dealing in their own specialized areas of activity like old age psychiatry, children psychiatry, learning disability, substance misuse, forensic psychiatry etc. A community mental health team could be based in hospital, health center, converted house, or purpose built unit while “social workers in the teams used to be employed and managed by local authority departments of social services, leading to potential problems, as most of the rest of the team were employed by health services. Recently, there have been moves to bring all staff under the same management.” (Gill & Barraclough, 2007, p. 344) In the mental health services, the role of inter agency collaboration is very crucial and important. Interagency collaboration and coordination has a mission and aim to produce the services to the needs of the persons instead of organisational boundaries. There is collaboration between The Queensland Department of Housing and Queensland Health with main aim to provide support; and referral to the range of clinical, non-government, government and private services most importantly to people with mental illnesses. In this process also involves informal social networks of families and friends. The main examples of this form being sharing of client information without causing any infringing privacy and confidentiality rights; formation of local area housing and support networks to deliver most appropriate services to people suffering from mental illness. Its main usefulness lies in its delivering the most integrated support for a much wider population group by referring to mainstream and specialist services. The main purpose of housing and associated support policy is in mentally ill patients and psychiatric disability. Improvements are in the form of life domains like achieving mental health recovery, best quality life, affordable housing, providing choice for independent lives and enabling involvement of consumers and community participation. Society’s main mission lies in its very nature of making each mentally ill patient feel important and making them move in the “journey toward a new and valued sense of identity, role and purpose outside the parameters of mental illness; and living well despite any limitations resulting from the illness”. (The State of Queensland (Disability Services Queensland), 2008) Every mentally ill patient should be able to decide for himself what exactly ‘living well’ means to him, with the outlook and view that experience of recovery felt by different mental health patients is different for each patient with several service models which can provide support recovery. They believe in the fact that recovery process occurs with the people attached to the mentally ill patients showing their keen interest in playing an active role in bringing improvement in their lives and when communities come together to improve mental health services. Mental health service is no doubt coordinated effort and could be practically implicated only with the proper regulation and maintenance. Under the government’s commitment of the Australian health care, agreement between the common wealth, state and territories is the most important component of the National Mental Health Strategies extension. The emphasis on the future is placed on the pattern of the national mental health care policy for 2003-2008, emphasizing on the complete care, improving to considerable degree on the treatment access and in the quality of primary and secondary interventions within the mental health system, and along with this widening the services for under served population, like indigenous people, older Australians and people living in rural or remote areas, increase and technological training to the work force and forming of deep and close net work of links between service sectors. (Evans, Elder, & Nizette, 2004) With the coordinate efforts and under the regulations, several departments in the mental health activities could help the practitioners to comprehend complex causes of mental illness, diagnose of the same and can prescribe effective intervention program and treatment making the client also have an experience of his recovery process. Reference List Beck, C. The Framework for Mental Health Partnerships in Queensland. Retrieved on May 17, 2009 from W.W.W: http://www.partnersinmind.com.au/index.php?action=view&view=478 Evans, K., Elder, R. & Nizette, D. (2004). Psychiatric and mental health nursing. Elsevier Australia. General Practice Queensland. (2009). Mental Health Education and Training. Retrieved on May 17, 2009 from W.W.W: http://www.gpqld.com.au/page/Programs/Mental_Health/Mental_Health_Education_and_Events_/ Gill, D. & Barraclough, J. (2007). Hughes' Outline of Modern Psychiatry. West Sussex, England: John Wiley and Sons. McKendrick, J. (2007). The mental health of Australia's Indigenous populations. In G. Meadows, B. Singh & M. Griggs (Eds.), Mental health in Australia: Collaborative community practice, pp. 95-98. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. The State of Queensland (Disability Services Queensland). (2008). Mental health in Disability Services Queensland. Retrieved on May 17, 2009 from W.W.W: http://www.disability.qld.gov.au/support-services/mental-health/ The State of Queensland (Queensland Health). (2008). Queensland Plan for Mental Health 2007-2017. Retrieved on May 17, 2009 from W.W.W: http://www.health.qld.gov.au/mentalhealth/abt_us/qpfmh/default.asp The State of Queensland (Queensland Health). (2008). The Investment. Retrieved on May 17, 2009 from W.W.W: http://www.health.qld.gov.au/mentalhealth/abt_us/qpfmh/investment.asp The State of Queensland (Queensland Health). (2008). Carer’s Matter: Multidisciplinary teams. Retrieved on May 17, 2009 from W.W.W: http://www.health.qld.gov.au/mhcarer/mhs_multi.asp The State of Queensland (Queensland Health). (2009). Mental Health Act 2000. Retrieved on May 17, 2009 from W.W.W: http://www.health.qld.gov.au/mentalhealth/mhact2000.asp Weine, S., et al. (2002). Guidelines for International Training in Mental Health and Psychosocial Interventions for Trauma Exposed Populations in Clinical and Community Settings. Psychiatry 65(2): 156-164 Read More