Labor Blog

Taking action on suicide

Nicola Roxon posted Tuesday, 27 July 2010

On average, around six Australians take their own lives each day. Attempted suicide is also a serious issue in Australia: more than one in eight Australians have thought about taking their own life, four per cent have made suicide plans and 3.3 per cent have attempted suicide during their lifetime.

The social and financial costs of suicide are substantial. The human cost is incalculable.

A re-elected Gillard Labor Government will invest in a comprehensive package of measures to tackle suicide and promote better mental health in our community.

Federal Labor will redouble our efforts to prevent suicide through a $277 million investment to support our communities, our schools, our health services and our carers to do more to identify and prevent suicide.

Our comprehensive package will target four key areas - frontline services for those most at risk; direct prevention and crisis intervention; services targeted to men; and looking after kids, building resilience and providing services to those at risk.

We will boost frontline services for people at greatest risk of suicide by providing psychological counselling services for around 12,500 people each year and up to 20,000 specialist psychiatry sessions in the community each year.

The Gillard Labor Government will invest in direct suicide prevention and services including expanding Lifeline's support hotlines to be able to take more calls, and we’ll also invest in more community-led suicide prevention services.

Research shows men are at greatest risk of suicide but are least likely to seek help. While men are four times as likely as women to commit suicide, an estimated 72 per cent do not seek help. A re-elected Gillard Labor Government will commit funding to directly target men, including through programs to identify and support workers with depression in 350 workplaces through beyondblue.

Overwhelmingly, the evidence shows that taking early action reduces the incidence and severity of problems later in life. Federal Labor will promote resilience and good mental health for both our young children and our young people by investing in providing more services for children with mental health problems.

This will include increasing funding to promote good mental health in our schools and additional services to treat 26,000 young Australians with serious mental health, developmental and behavioural issues.

A further initiative will see Federal Labor provide a significant boost to online mental health and counselling services to encourage young people who may be reluctant or unable to access face-to-face mental health services an alternative avenue through which to seek help.

To ensure these new initiatives as well as existing investments in mental health services are delivering better outcomes, Federal Labor will also establish an annual Report Card on mental health and suicide prevention.

Support is available Australia-wide for anyone who may be distressed by phoning Lifeline on 13 11 14; Kids Help Line on 1800 55 1800.
Tags: health, Mental, Roxon, suicide

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4 Comments

justanordinarymum from Adelaide (Country) , SA Saturday, 14 August 2010, 23:14

Hi Nicola, I have just read Labor's Suicide Prevention Action plan and despite my concerns about support for peope living in the wider community with mental health issues, I commend you for at least beginning to tackle the problem. No one knows why someone kills themselves but it seems the pain of living at that particular moment, is too great and the only solution seems to be to end it all. Often it is a fleeting thing and the tragedy is that if there was some intervention, the person might well feel a whole lot different, even in a matter of hours. My own daughter became very depressed and angry around 5 years ago. I knew she was depressed but she refused to even go to the doctor. However, I was unaware that she was actually suicidal and I had no idea until a year or two later (when she confessed one night) just how close she got to ending it all. It turns out on the night she had decided that it was 'time', she poured her heart out to a stranger on the other side of the world via the internet. I have no idea who this person was, but he talked her through it and after a few hours, she had decided that maybe there was hope after all. I just felt 'gutted' when she finally told me, that she didn't come to me for help but then I was not exactly dealing well with things post her father's and my relationship breakdown and I was in truth, at that time just adding to her problems. I will always be eternally grateful to that stranger who I will never know, who helped my daughter get throught those few crisis hours and saved her life. However, the chilling thing is it could have just as easily been someone who actually encouraged her to go ahead and kill herself. With young people's addiction to the technological world, I would like to see life-line or a similar organisation set up a 24 hour crisis WEB_SITE that people could connect to in those late hours of the night and dark early hours of the morning when it's lonely and peope are most at risk, especially after drinking or taking drugs. I know a calming voice is generally better, but with mobile phones and the like it can be harder to keep a voice call ongoing than internet chat. Young people text and type more than they talk these days. Most young people in the most at-risk age groups seem to have access to a computer. A 'voice' on the internet saved my daughter, perhaps it could help save someone else's son or daughter. Not sure how it could work, but perhaps there could be a network of volunteers who could even work from home if they went through a moderated-type system.
bloodypom from wallanbah , nsw Wednesday, 28 July 2010, 23:28

I 2 welcome the money to be spent on mental health, but it is a very comprehensive problem. Lifeline is good for the first line of contact, but we need better follow through.The psychotic patients are not dealt with, by staff in general hospitals in a very compassionate way. The Richmond report opened up the doors, but nobody did anything in the community, appart from some unscrupulous people opening up boarding houses, shoving all the residents onto the streets, during the day, and they had to live in bus stops and charity bins, as all their money was taken off them. We need people who have passion for their work, who care for these people, We need education of the public about mental illness. We do not need these people put into police cells, as anyone who has a psychiatric illness needs compassion, not brute force. You don't need to be told by the local psychiatist, when you need help, to get some money together, and find private help, because they want their local mental health ward to be used for macrame, basket weaving, and scone making, who look good when the visiting dignatories arrive. Zedlive, music therapy is very good for some people with a mental illness, but, like everything, 1 size does not fit all, and each patient should be assessed, and treated as an individual. If Father Abbott gets his way, there will be more call for mental health intervention, when all the unemployed, are sent to where the work is, splitting families. I think all the Liberals need educating, on how to talk to people as equals, not dictated to by father/mother figures. ( Transactual Analysis, Berne)
zedlive from Tamworth , NSW Wednesday, 28 July 2010, 07:28

CassRea, there was a time when there was a whole pool of people working in community building [the real infrastructure for mental health] who are no longer doing so. They are busy being the second income to pay for a house. Also, I have heard of great results with music therapy. Does medicare cover music therapy?
CassRea from Margate , Tasmania Wednesday, 28 July 2010, 00:28

I welcome the dollars for suicide prevention BUT this is still not a comprehensive policy or plan for delivering services for the mental health of the community. For low incidence disorders such as schizophrenia there is no action. Low order is 1 in a 100. Any other illness at this level would attract a lot more attention. But until stigma about psychosis is addressed just as with suicidal thoughts the community will not move forward. We do not need more hospital beds when one bed would almost pay a weeks salary for a qualified mental health clinician in the community. We do not need more money spent on NGO sector services, usefull as they are. The missing link is properly resourced government community services with qualified clincians who can follow up and support cliennts rather than just responding to the latest cirsis. No wonder the services cannot attract staff. They can't follow through with treatments that they have spent years studying and mastered to qualify as health professionals. They aren't allowed to practice their skills. Assisting people on their road to recovery is the best and most rewarding days work. Successive governments have diluted this area of professional vocation until it hasalmost lost all meaning. Mental illness and its road to recovery cannot be tracked like a broken leg or a ruptured appendix. But bureaucrats have tried to impose formulas for optimum bed days/treatment sessions in a setting that should be non-medical and person based. This is just another example of the gross ignorance of those who craft our health systems. If you don't fit the box you don't get the funding.