Community Affairs Reference Committee Report
06/04/2011
The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (20:43): I wish to speak in support of the Hon. Mr Dawkins’ motion also. I am someone who is acutely aware of the lack of adequate campaigning around mental illness and suicide, both for personal and, obviously, professional reasons. As it is the job of this parliament to work toward addressing important issues which are core to the fabric and functioning of this society, it makes perfect sense to me to inquire into the best way to keep our people safe from suicide.
There are, of course, numerous factors which can lead a person to develop suicidal tendencies, whether they are lifestyle factors or physiological. Either way, I am greatly astounded and confused as to why mental illness, particularly as it is now largely recognised as a disability, is still such a taboo subject. As the Hon. Ms Franks pointed out, one in five Australians will experience some kind of mental illness or depression in their lifetime, yet we still continue to treat this as something foreign or untoward.
As the Hon. Mr Brokenshire said, in an ideal world, we would not have to deal with a motion such as this, but we do not live in an ideal world, so we need to address the issue. As a friend of mine once said to me, ‘If you have a heart condition, you take your medication. You seek treatment from a doctor, and there is no shame in that. So, why is seeking treatment for mental illness so different?’—and why should it be?
As the old saying goes, ‘The first step toward addressing a problem is admitting that we have one,’ and, clearly, if we are losing six Australians per day to suicide, we have a problem. Just like we cannot treat a tumour by ignoring it, we cannot address mental illness by keeping it locked up and hidden away. Therefore, I support the Hon. Mr Dawkins’ push for increased campaigning to increase acknowledgement and acceptance of the prevalence of mental illness and suicide in our community.
Of course, this is not going to happen quickly nor easily, particularly because it seems to me that mental illness is currently under fire, so to speak, from two sides: those who experience mental illness and are ashamed or fearful of it, and those have not experienced it yet and are judgemental and dismissive of it. Unless we address the issue from both these sides, campaigning is likely to be limited in effectiveness.
I think that there can be little denying that at least part of the shame which people may feel about their own mental illness might be related to the social environment in which a person lives. For this reason, I commend the Hon. Mr Dawkins for placing particular focus for this motion on the issue of suicide in regional areas. After watching several episodes of the ABC program Landline, which talked about the small regional community of Sheffield which lost at least 10 of its residents to suicide in only three years, I was reminded that mental illness really is more prevalent and more widespread than we perhaps like to believe. As one person interviewed in the program stated: ‘It wasn’t just young people, it was old people—people from all walks of life.’
Unfortunately, we may never know what caused these people to make the tragic decision they did in ending their lives. One can speculate and say that it could have been boredom arising out of living in regional areas with limited access to entertainment and leisure activities, limited access to employment opportunities, drought, etc. However, what really became clear to me while watching the Landline series was that, despite the close-knit nature of relationships residents of small towns like Sheffield experience, people in regional areas, particularly men, generally speaking do seem to be less likely than average to acknowledge and discuss their depression or suicidal thoughts.
As I said, mental illness is now largely regarded under the disability umbrella, so to speak, as being a part of that, and it is, of course, for that reason a big part of my work in this parliament. I see a high incidence of what we in the community and perhaps elsewhere refer to as ‘dual disability’, that is, a person perhaps with a physical or intellectual disability, for instance, who also experiences mental illness.
The isolation felt by people in regional areas is also no stranger to me in my work. My office often hears—too often, in fact—from parents and carers of children with disabilities for instance, particularly autism spectrum disorders, living in regional areas. More often than not, the special services which their child requires to live a happy life and to reach their full potential are simply not available in their area, leading to frustration and added pressure on the family, which can be greatly exacerbated when the family is forced to uproot their entire life and move to a city like Adelaide in search of support for their child, only to find that even the services available here are limited. This is a frustration and a pain that I imagine cannot be truly understood by people who are not living it themselves, which may lead the struggling person or family to become even further introverted and shut themselves out from the world around them.
This is why I, like the Hon. Mr Dawkins, acknowledge and commend the work of organisations like CORES, which aim to address mental illness and suicide by arming participants with the tools to talk about mental illness openly, free from judgement or fear of reprimand. By arming more people with this knowledge and by addressing the environmental and/or social contributors to suicide, such as a lack of support services, we can and must bring mental illness out of the dark ages. This is, after all, a long overdue debt which we as a society owe to those living with mental illness and to ourselves, as it is vital to our development as an open, humanitarian and equal society. With these few words, Mr President, I strongly commend the Hon. Mr Dawkins’ motion to the house.
