Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about mental health, an issue that has received a lot of attention over the last month and certainly over the last year as well. As deputy chairman of the Senate inquiry into mental health, I have read numerous accounts from Australian individuals and families whose loved ones have been unable to access support in the event of mental illness. In some cases, family members have taken their own lives. What is abundantly clear is that there has been a chronic under funding of mental health in Australia since the deinstitutionalisation of the mentally ill commenced about three decades ago. However, there are encouraging signs that the necessary political will and community concern now exists for significant and longstanding improvements to be made to the mental health system in this country. A step in that direction will be tomorrow’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. I hope that that will signal a major turnaround in the history of mental health services in this country. It would certainly not be before time.

The willingness of high-profile figures to speak about their battles with mental illness is important in that process. It destigmatises the illness in this country. This is encouraging people to seek treatments and discuss their illnesses with loved ones which, for many, may be the hardest steps to take in the road to recovery. For men, mental illness can be a difficult issue to discuss, particularly in the context of sport where mental toughness is lauded. There is still an expectation that men should always be self-reliant, stoic and emotionally in control. Subsequently, some men keep their problems to themselves, only revealing it at the point where crisis ensues, for example, when they attempt or commit suicide. The frankness with which former Premier Geoff Gallop in Western Australia has spoken about his battle with depression could well be his greatest act of public service, as another former Premier Jeff Kennett has suggested. It inspires people doing it tough in many places to seek help.

One place where I suspect pressures exist for people to face that kind of problem is in this building itself. A former coalition staff member wrote only a couple of years ago:

To expect people to work 16-hour days day in and day out in such a place is unfair and downright cruel. And to expect them to do it in a city such as Canberra, where there are few support networks, little sense of community and no capacity to escape, means that the mental health of those who work in the House is put under such intense pressure that drugs, alcohol, sex and workaholism often come to be seen as the only means for survival. ... if the normal occupational health and safety rules applied to Parliament House, the place would be shut down as a dangerous working environment.

I disassociate myself from the comments this person made about there being little sense of community in Canberra. It may be true of those who fly in and fly out of this place and who work in this building on a temporary basis, but it is certainly not true of the rest of the community. But the gist of the point being made by this person is very real and very valid—that is, that this building is typical in a sense of the pressures faced in many places in Australia as work impinges on the wellbeing of individuals.

While some of us would not agree, others certainly will have seen the signs of these pressures in a number of places—as I said, even in this building. When there was the unfortunate suicide of a Labor MP in 2000, Tony Abbott made a comment which I think we would all agree with. He said:

We didn’t reach out to him enough in his life, and we shouldn’t wait until they’re gone to appreciate them. Obviously Greg Wilton was not gentle on himself. The best thing we could do would be to rededicate ourselves to being kinder and gentler to each other, as he would have wished.

Despite the time that has elapsed since then and in the context of the debate about mental illness going on in Australia today, I think we would do well to heed those words.

The impact each of us has on others simply through our everyday dealings should not be underestimated. In any given year, one in five Australians will experience some measure of mental illness, so it is inevitable that we will have contact with such people. A simple smile or other gesture of kindness plays a significant role in a person’s sense of social acceptance and, therefore, in their recovery. Of course, we will not know which of the people we encounter on a day-to-day basis might be at risk of some form of mental illness.

The support available for the mentally ill has rightfully come under the spotlight. A simple answer to the problem facing us in Australia is more money. Another response is greater cooperation in the spending of that existing and new money between state, territory and Commonwealth governments. Clearly, underspending in those areas has been a significant feature in the past, although I acknowledge a very significant increase in Commonwealth spending in the last 10 years, particularly with regard to the supply of drugs assisting people with mental illnesses under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Australia has undertaken a significant cultural and economic transformation over the last two decades. It gives rise to the question: to what extent are changes in Australian society adding to pressures that exacerbate existing mental illness? No doubt some people have a genetic predisposition that makes them more susceptible to mental illness, but there are deep societal reasons for what appears to be an increase in mental illness in Australia today. As I said, Australia has undertaken a significant transformation. One commentator has described the end product of this as the ‘end of certainty’. Australians have unprecedented social mobility and enjoy a material standard of living past generations could only have dreamt of, but has this come at the expense of our mental health?

The Prime Minister has rightly said that the family is the best available social welfare unit. I believe it is also a vital bulwark against the onset of mental illness among young people. But it is arguably harder today for a family to raise happy, well-rounded and adjusted children than it has ever been. Young people today are exposed to a wide range of influences such as television advertising, music and the internet, much of which is pernicious. Combine this with the pressure on both parents to work and the high divorce rate and we have an idea of the challenging environment that families face today.

Social mobility, while generally a good thing, has placed the weight of expectation on the shoulders of young people. Social status is sought through the purchase of technology and through white-collar employment. Prestigious careers are sought and marriage is delayed. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the number of people living alone in Australia is projected to increase from 1.8 million in 2001 to between 2.8 million and 3.7 million in 2026—an increase of between 57 and 105 per cent. These figures hold implications in the context of mental health.

In 2002, sociologist David De Vaus produced a report for the Australian Institute of Family Studies which investigated the relationship between marriage and mental health. Using data from the 1997 National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing of Adults, De Vaus concluded that marriage seems to protect both men and women against mental disorders. This rather flies against what might appear to be intuitive evidence before some people. But the fact is that the evidence suggests otherwise.

Another factor, no doubt, in the higher incidence of mental illness is the increasingly sedentary lifestyle that many of us lead. The relationship between that lifestyle and physical conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease have been well publicised, but there is further work to be done to explore the relationship between that sedentary lifestyle and mental ill health. Researchers also link changes in diet in the last 50 years to the rise in mental illness. The British Mental Health Foundation says that studies clearly link attention deficit disorder, depression, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia to junk food and the absence of essential fats, vitamins and minerals in industrialised diets. In 2002, the Director of the Black Dog Institute and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales, Gordon Parker, conducted a study which found that natural and artificial chemicals in food can cause symptoms of anxiety and depression in some people.

Clearly, we have a great deal yet to learn about the incidence of these factors and how they interact with each other and with mental health. The Australian government’s $116 million Building a Healthy, Active Australia package is a welcome step towards addressing aspects in that equation to do with physical activity, but a great deal more needs to be done. I hope that the task of addressing those issues will be strengthened by the inquiry into mental illness currently being conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Mental Health.