Senator Andrew Bartlett
Sunday, March 13, 2005
 
Mental Health
I know I have written about Cornelia Rau a lot on this site. However, the story about her case on the Sunday program today is definitely worth watching. You can read the transcript here. The website for this story also has one of the most badly worded webpoll questions I've seen. Webpolls tend to be dodgy at the best of times, but asking "should detention centres be abolished?" is firstly not that much to do with the story and secondly is bound to get a massive No vote. The issue isn't whether there should be detention centres, it's how long people are in them, who is put in them, and what the conditions are like. Anyway, the question also distracts from what I think is the main aspect of the story, which is the appalling attitudes to people with significant mental illness.

Every story like this has its own unique tragic factors, but this story suggests to me that systemic factors make it inevitable that many other mentally ill people will continue to suffer unnecessarily – something which harms our whole community in various ways. A comment left on my previous post from someone with personal experience certainly suggests this too. I don't endorse all aspects of it, but it's worth reading, (which you can do if you click here. )

I repeat my suggestion that anyone who does have experience or an interest in this area – from any perspective – consider doing a submission to the Senate Committee that's just been set up on mental health. Submissions can be brief. The Terms of Reference are here.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Sunday, March 13, 2005 Permalink
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