‘Mental health’; a broad canvas that permits a highly misinformed landscape where anything goes, particularly ignorance and social stigma. Can’t we do better than this?
I wondered how long it would take for the mainstream media to blame the public mental health system and I am very disappointed SBS is leading the charge with journalist Charis Chang and SBS Editors running the headline: ‘Bondi attack puts spotlight on ‘ramshackle’ mental health system, experts say‘.
As for the two ‘mental health’ experts cited in this article, Sydney University professor Anthony Harris and National Mental Health Consumer Alliance chair Priscilla Brice, both should join their ranks as professional opportunists gathering the limelight all too ready to once again stigmatise people with mental illness, blaming it almost entirely on the public mental health system. It may not have been their intention, but they are intelligent enough to know this is the way it will be used or interpreted by the media, and perceived by politicians and the general public, looking for someone or some organisation to blame just two days later.
The act of one man, whether they have a mental illness or not does not make the public mental health system liable inasmuch as in a court of law, someone else is not ordinarily culpable or liable for an act perpetrated by another – that is mob mentality, it is speculative at best and has no causative relationship, it is reckless.
Once again it falls to consumers and carers such as NSW resident Dorothy Cross to remind us that people with a mental illness or indeed schizophrenia are more likely to be victims of society than perpetrators. Statistically speaking the public are more at risk from people with fundamentalist religious or political beliefs, extremists, people with means, criminals, gangs, those with extreme ideological beliefs, little or no ethical, moral or social values, conscience or judgment more commonly found in the general population than people with mental illness. In fact, it is people with mental illness that will suffer as a result of this kind of insensitive, poorly nuanced, motivated and timed (though I’d like to brand here) rubbish journalism. Not what I’d expect from SBS, and certainly not prematurely from our two ‘so called’ experts.
There are a number of elephants in the room
Did it ever occur to either of the two ‘mental health’ experts that the man here who carried out this horrific and dreadful act in Bondi Junction mall was or may NOT have been a recipient of the public mental health system, and was hidden from view by private psychiatry, socially and politically backed by society itself. It would appear closer examination of the initial facts emerging, that for last 18 years he had been seeing private psychiatrist/s in Queensland, which had kept him out of the purview of the public mental health system even in his own substantive State of residence. As such you cannot then blame lack of public mental health services, access, funding, follow up, care coordination or even lack of consumer financial capacity in paying for continuing medication which might keep him well (if he is able one way or another to afford a private psychiatrist, but perhaps that too became the operant factor). Nor indeed if a private patient chooses to cease seeing their private psychiatrist and later move inter-State beneath the radar.
Where is the connection here between private psychiatry and the public mental health system? Disturbingly it is the unhealthy opportunistic if not symbiotic-parasitic relationship that private psychiatry exerts on the public mental health system, removing a ‘patient’ from the more comprehensive and effective umbrella of the public mental health system and then abandoning their responsibility when their ‘client’ no longer turns up. Where is the bridge for follow up, where is the net without someone to cast it?
Yet our two experts here, choose to jump on the bandwagon with SBS, so soon after this tragic event, and blame this on a ‘ramshackle’ public mental health system in another State – That is the headline and I see no counter argument to it in this article. I find this quite outrageous and it does a huge disservice to people with mental illness, family and carers, to mental health staff of our public mental health system (with all its faults, funding, political and institutional problems), further stigmatising mental illness, mental health and de facto, if not by poor judgment misleading the general public, strengthening the reactionary and ignorant arm of politicians and health ministers who are in fact part of the problem for legislating and creating this apartheid, enmeshed privileged and blind private – public mental health divide in our society.
While psychiatrists always come out on this misguided defence of their practice and ironically blame the public mental health system or its funding, they fail to recognise their overarching conservative institutional involvement in it and the covert private psychiatry they avariciously defend sucking the energy and capacity on elitist salaries out of our public mental health system, as well as leaving it blind. Perhaps Professor Harris should consider this as a frontline social, political and broader institutional problem alongside the impact of his voice in this article on the pliable discourse of public perception at the beckon mercy of our ill-informed and largely privately owned mainstream media (hence why I am seriously disappointed with SBS, who as an uncertain private-public broadcaster entity should nevertheless know better).
As for the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance which strongly advocates for more private sector psychologists, they are only adding to this misadventure by putting their faith in another private sector establishment and powerful institution, echoing the same blunted path, ‘business model’ and self-interest of private psychology. And the chair of this self-appointed conglomerate has her expert mental health background, self-described as ‘neurodivergent’, and graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD), an MBA in Social Impact from the University of NSW, and a substantive career in racial equity. Perhaps the chair of this organisation might do better to likewise consider the consequences of her general speculation before the facts pertinent to this event are fully known, given her expert brush with social inequality in our society.
Last but not least has any mainstream media reporting on this event considered to distinguish between mental health and mental illness, noting the repeated unchallenged reporting (of which the ABC and others have been complicit), where NSW police have frequently and exclusively referred to this man and his ‘mental health background’, note not ‘mental illness’ but ‘mental health’? Mentally healthy people do not behave this way, and while mental health is not the antithesis of ‘mental illness’, nor do people with ‘mental illness’ typically behave this way – distinct and subtle nuances not mentioned by way of balance in the cited article or any other live broadcast or ‘newsworthy’ report I have read or heard to date since this event unfolded.
We have no reliable facts of ‘substance’ here, no mention or ruling out of alcohol or substance use, character profile, personality disorder, criminal behaviour, hatred, bitterness and vengeful, institutional/social alienation, or plethora of other potential and accumulative variables, factors and reinforcers at play previously mentioned; or the impact, social consequences and risks of any of these – But as usual like sheep jumping absent fences, straight to ‘mental health’, a broad canvas that permits a highly misinformed landscape where anything goes – but particularly ignorance, social stigma, poor journalism and disappointing commentary from ‘so called’ experts.
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