Mental health takes a toll on regions, Crook

Author: Tony Crook
Published on: 03-August-2011

Nationals WA Federal Member for O’Connor Tony Crook MP has urged the Federal Government not to ignore mental health issues in regional Australia.

Mr Crook said a lack of mental health services in the regions and a lack of assistance from the Federal Government has taken a toll on regional WA.

“Many regional communities can be quite isolated, and they do not have sufficient services to cope with mental health issues,” Mr Crook said.

“People living in regional WA are dealing with a great range of stresses and pressures.

“Issues like the Carbon Tax and the live export ban have been very damaging to regional WA, especially with many communities still recovering from one of the worst droughts in Australia’s history.”

Mr Crook said addressing mental health issues was also an important step towards building resilient and sustainable regional communities.

“If we want to keep people living and working in regional Western Australia, we must consider the serious impact of mental health issues and take steps towards addressing this,” Mr Crook said.

“If people cannot access services in the regions they will simply move elsewhere, and that will be to the detriment of many regional communities.”

Mr Crook said mental health issues affected people of all ages and communities of all sizes.

“You can point to young farmers and young miners in the Wheatbelt and the Goldfields as being socially isolated and stressed out because of their work, but mental health issues are equally prevalent in larger communities such as Esperance and Albany.”

Mr Crook said programs such as Headspace were excellent initiatives to tackle mental health issues for young people, but much more needed to be done.

“Headspace offers a great model for young people. Unfortunately, there are only two Headspace centres in all of regional WA, and they are thousands of kilometres apart.”

Mr Crook said young people growing up in Esperance, the Goldfields and the Wheatbelt needed to have access to the Headspace service.

Establishing a Headspace centre in the Wheatbelt had also been identified as a priority by Professor Geoffrey Riley, Head of the Rural Clinical School of WA.

Mr Crook pointed to the 2011-12 Federal Budget as a key example of the Federal Government ignoring mental health in regional Australia.

“While the Budget included a $2.2 billion mental health package, it did not feature any specific mental health programs or funding for regional Australia – and even resulted in a funding cut for the Better Access Program.”

Mr Crook confirmed he has met with the Federal Minister for Mental Health, Mark Butler, to express his concern at the Federal Government’s attitude towards regional mental health.

See this article on the member's website