Tag: Politics

My Sliding Doors Encounter With Our Public Mental Health System

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Have you ever had a moment when your answer to a question determined whether your life imploded?

I have.

It came five days into parenthood. I was lying on the floor in my maternity hospital room crying because I was trying to outrun a jaguar chasing me towards a cliff. Things were starting to go very wrong in my brain.

In the following months, when my mind warped and writhed in the grip of psychosis and later catatonic depression, and when what started out as postnatal psychosis turned out to be a first episode of bipolar 1 disorder, I could not imagine things being worse.

But they could have been.

Continue reading “My Sliding Doors Encounter With Our Public Mental Health System”

Suicide Watch

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(Confronting content ahead)

Suicide is the leading cause of death for people aged 14-44. Our prime minister is giving Lifeline (our suicide hotline) $34 million to:

‘dramatically boost staff numbers dealing with pleas for help. The funding to Lifeline comes as national suicide rates reach a 10-year high, with more than eight deaths a day.’ (Sunday Mail 6/05/18)

I don’t doubt the PM’s good intentions. It’s easy to look at those statistics and think:

‘Let’s throw some money at this problem.’

But injecting funds into the surface of such a complex issue and proudly announcing it to the media, is like patting the captain of the Titanic on the back, as water rushes into the hull of his ship, and saying:

‘Don’t worry. We’ve got this. We can see this huge iceberg is the problem. We’ve got people sitting on top of it, hacking it down. And, to distract everyone from the drama we can make snowcones from the ice that’s falling on the deck. Continue reading “Suicide Watch”

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