Preventive measures needed to address mental health
I attended a recent Sydney Ideas event that demonstrated a need for preventive measures in mental health against a backdrop of rising workers’ compensation claims in the area.
Sam Mostyn, Beyond Blue chair, described many workplaces in Australia as not psychologically fit places.
“We’ve lost the ability to engage with one another in a very human way whether with our neighbours or colleagues at work,” she said.
Similarly, Rev Bill Crews stressed, “We know what to do, but we don’t do it. We need to get out of our houses and talk to our neighbours. We tend to professionalise everything and the whole person is left out leaving us feeling alienated and alone.”
The discussion was prompted by keynote speaker Alastair Campbell, visiting from the UK, and advocating for action on mental health after experiencing his own challenges including a “very public psychotic episode” that saw him arrested as well as the early loss of a brother suffering from schizophrenia.
Campbell called for a greater focus and action on a preventative approach that stopped people from becoming mentally ill. He insisted storytelling was part of the remedy to ensure there was no stigma or shame.
Mostyn, too, lamented that Australia is more often working at the acute end of mental health and providing far less opportunities for early interventions. She pointed to a new strategy from Beyond Blue to address, for example, anxiety very early in the mental health journey. The service offering low intensity counselling, in this early phase of its introduction, had demonstrated that seven out of 10 of those assisted solved their problem before it worsened.
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