Mental Illness can be a chicken or the egg question when it comes to those on the fringes of society; those homeless and itinerant, from broken, dysfunctional or damaging homes who survive without family support, those cut off from community, from their cultures, those living with disabilities.  If these people develop mental illness there’s the assumption that a psychiatrist or psychologist is their next stop.  But that presumed the mental illness is the cause not the symptom. 

Living with disabilities, being homeless or itinerant, having no family support, lacking basic literacy or education, being disconnected from community, increase a person’s chances of mental illness and reduce their recovery until those issues are addressed, until there appears to be hope, opportunities, empowerment, reconnection, social supports in place, a plan.  That’s what Occupational Therapists and Social Workers do.

Whilst a psychiatrist can prescribe these people medication or help them explore the pathologies they often already know they have, the psychiatrist or the psychologist doesn’t do social work, they don’t do Occupational Therapy.  They  can’t get people back into work or explore self employment options with them.  They can’t research possibilities for returning to education, help with literacy or the funding to cover it.  They can’t link people up with community supports or help them to create social networks to empower them with a sense of belonging.  Psychiatrists and psychologist have important skills, but Social Work and OT aren’t some of them.  So whilst psychiatrists and psychologists may pick up work once Nicola Roxon follows through with proposed funding cuts to Medicare cover for Social Workers and OTs as of 2011, it is really the patients and clients without additional disabilities, who have good education, work opportunities, social, community and family supports who will continue to get the best out of their services.

I know of those who won’t.

• People with Asperger’s living with long term unemployment (only 12% of adults with Asperger’s have ongoing paid employment), estranged from their families, without friends, who have drifted into homelessness and developed mental health problems.
• People with severe Dyspraxia and communication disorders who are socially isolated with no occupations, no friendship groups, who have developed mental health problems.
• The siblings and carers of those with severe disabilities who are at risk of breakdowns or going through them but need more than ‘a shrink’.
• The parents of children with autism at risk of harming their children if they don’t get help with their own mental health issues in the context of the social work issues of caring for someone with autism.

These people have names and faces.  They are people I’ve encountered in my work as an autism consultant and advocate since 1996.  They are people who have had medication and found it didn’t solve their lives, people who abused medication to try and cope with the hopelessness of their lives, people who felt alienated in the psychologist’s office and gave up  because they fixated on them getting insight into their condition without exploring what was missing in their lives, people who’ve been in the shrink’s office but need help that’s more holistic, more practical than the shrink offered.

Of course these people are social minorities.  Will we allow the Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, to ignore such people?

Add your story, add your voice.  This funding slash isn’t set in stone yet.  The decision will be reviewed in December 2010.  Write to your MP.  Contact the federal health minister, Nicola Roxon, and tell her what you think!

Federal Health Minister, Nicola Roxon,
1 Thomas Holmes Street
Maribyrnong Vic 3032,

ph 9317 7077.

or email her your experiences and feelings on the matter

nicola@nicolaroxonmp.com

Make your voice count.

Also 10,000 signatures is required to try and change this by December 2010. Please add yours.  Can you help get signatures from friends, fellow spectrumites, local GP practices, your community?  Here’s the petition.

Richardson House petition-1

Please print it out.

Once signed they need to all be sent to the address at the foot of the petition.

Thanks for giving a damn.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, autism consultant and public speaker.
http://www.donnawilliams.net