Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I'm grateful to the member for Macquarie for raising this issue and moving this important motion. We're one of the richest, most privileged countries in the world, and yet in the area of mental health services we're clearly failing those patients and those families. We're facing nothing short of a mental health crisis. To be honest, the numbers are quite frightening. According to Suicide Prevention Australia, suicide is the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 24, and the vast majority, 70 per cent, are young men. This is tragic. Those numbers are absolutely tragic. The rates of suicide for our Indigenous population, our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth, our LGBTIQ people, our young people who live in rural and remote areas are higher still.

Reports from the ABS have shown that suicide results in the greatest loss of productive years of life in Australia compared to any other cause of death—115,000 years of potential life, if you add them all up, were lost from intentional harm in 2019 alone. That is tragic. This is a far greater number than for cancer, heart disease, et cetera, precisely because of the shocking number of younger people dying tragically early from drug use and mental health issues. What is most heartbreaking is that this number continues to grow year by year. Evidence shows that half of mental disorders first emerge by the age of 14, and 75 per cent by the age of 24. This demonstrates how vital it is that we get youth mental health services correct—that we get them right, accessible and affordable. As a parliament and as a society, we have to give priority to youth specific early intervention strategies.

It is having a significant flow-on effect on our health system. More and more patients present at emergency departments for lack of any other option, for lack of services, for lack of specific clinics that deal with mental illness. According to an article in The Conversation from April earlier this year, there was close to a 40 per cent increase in mental health presentations at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, in my electorate. This 40 per cent increase then puts pressure on all the other services as well. That was between February 2019 and February 2021. This puts increased pressure on our EDs, our doctors and nurses, and contributes to the growth problem of ambulance ramping in our state, which has been horrendous. These people need a specific service, a specific clinic, somewhere they can present 24/7 that will deal with mental health illnesses.

Also, according to some of the paramedics that I speak to here in my electorate in South Australia, on one particular day in September this year there were no ambulances available for 17 high-priority emergencies in Adelaide's southern suburbs because ambulances were tied up ramping at hospitals. A lot of those people were presenting with mental illnesses. This is an enormous problem for South Australia—one that this Liberal state government, the Marshall government, has simply failed to address. The increase in mental health patients and the difficulty these patients face accessing help means that the emergency department is no longer a last resort for care as it should be; it is often the only resort available to many. We need a specific service that deals with people that are able to present themselves 24/7 for a specific mental illness clinic here in South Australia.

The Grattan Institute has previously highlighted that there is a huge gap—in fact, they called it a 'yawning gap'—in services for people who need intensive community support but not inpatient care. In a report published in 2020 it said that federal and state governments need to work more closely to provide appropriate resources for mental health care. Unfortunately, it's not happening, and those people that require mental health care are being left behind, many ending up homeless and many in trouble with the police. (Time expired)

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