Mental health slashed by budget cuts

–by Hannah Muir

The Western Australian mental health services have been subject to yet another severe budget cut affecting the treatment of those suffering from mental illness.

Last year, the mental health sector suffered severe cuts to the Better Access to Mental Health Care initiative.

The service provides Australians with serious yet all too common mental health issues such as depression and anxiety access to a certain amount of subsidized counseling or psychology sessions each year. The amount of available sessions has already decreased from 18 to 10, a cut that proves to have significant effects.

Based on a study conducted by the Australian Psychological Society (APS), there were 9,900 people that received between 11 and 18 sessions in 2010, most of these were depression and anxiety sufferers. The APS Executive Director, Professor Lyn Littlefield believes this statistic proves 10 sessions is not enough time to successfully treat a mental illness.

“Of course people are required more than 10 sessions of psychological treatment to achieve an effective outcome,” she says.

As well as the effects on the Better Access plan, cuts were also made to Medicare funding, decreasing the amount that patients can claim. This makes it even harder and more expensive for people to get help through GP mental health services.

The 2012 budget cuts add insult to injury for the mental health service with a $400 million cut that has made it near impossible for society’s most vulnerable groups to receive the help they need.

Grace Wiley is a community mental health occupational therapist at the Alma street mental health clinic in Fremantle. The mental health budget cuts have affected her work tremendously.

“Cuts to community support such as Better Access means that people cant get the basic help that you should be able to receive from the community. This leads to an …