I was very fortunate to be involved in running a survey of the participants at the The Mental Health Services Conference (TheMHS), which was held recently in Perth.
TheMHS is an unusual conference in that it brings together a wide array of players on the mental health stage; mental health service consumers, carers, health care professionals, administrators, academics, government bureaucrats – the whole spectrum of interests in mental health.
I am of the view that in Australia we need different values as the basis for our health services.
Currently the values are largely those of the governments and the medical profession. These have their place but we as citizens and patients and carers don’t have much chance to have our voices heard. It is to address this deficiency for example that I have been involved in organising and facilitating “citizens’ juries” which bring together randomly selected citizens, give them good information and ask them what they want as citizens from this or that service.
TheMHS conference goes along somewhat similar philosophical lines in bringing together, as indicated, a wide range of actors on the mental health stage. There is a belief here too that all sorts of voices and not just those of the conventional decision makers need to be heard. So I jumped at the opportunity to run this survey!
The survey looked at two things, first the sort of principles or values that participants want to underpin mental health services and second what they see as priorities.
What was most striking in the responses was the extent of agreement across the different groups. They assessed values and priorities very similarly whether they were consumers or carers or academics or health care professionals.
The most exciting results, I think, were that they want the voices of consumers and people with mental illness to be heard in priority setting in the mental health services.
If there are to be more resources for the mental health services, and there was real concern expressed at the lack of resources currently, the community sector is where they want these resources to go and they want to see more consumer advocates and peer workers.
Barriers to reform? Government, the bureaucracy and clinicians and their medical model; plus lack of resources, lack of political will, lack of community understanding and stigma.
It was quite depressing for me to read the answers to the open ended questions about stumbling blocks to doing better in mental health services. The consensus across the different groups on what is wrong is stunning. These TheMHS voices merit being heard. One can only hope that they will be by those who have the power to bring improvements in mental health services in this country.
Professor Gavin Mooney, is Chair of the Social and Public Health Economics Research Group (SPHERe) at Curtin University, Western Australia and co-convenor of the WA Social Justice Network. He is also Professor of Health Economics at Curtin University and Honorary Professor Public Health, School of Public Health University of Sydney.
Justin Coleman
October 14, 2009 at 3:01 am
contact
Hi Gavin, since your Curtin contacts altered, you’re a hard man to track down! Please contact me (re Citizen’s Jury amongst other things) on colross@tpg.com.au Cheers, Dr Justin Coleman