The Federal Government is taking initiatives in introducing preventive metal health steps. One of them is introduction of mental health checks for three-year-olds.
The Government currently offers a general health check for four-year-olds whose parents receive family benefits. Mental Health Minister Mark Butler says the Government has been advised to bring forward the check and broaden it to include the social and emotional well-being of the child. He said, “Three is an incredibly important time in the development of a child's life… We think this is a very important advance in trying to build our evidence base, our capacity to identify early infants and children who are exhibiting developmental difficulties.”
He added that the Government has received advice from psychiatrists and from pediatricians about the benefits. “This is something we want to build over the next 12 months - get an expert group to design the different elements of the healthy kids check…This is voluntary. We will promote the benefits of this to families,” he said.
On Tuesday night, the Federal Government announced an extra $1.5 billion for mental health services in its budget. This package would spread over five years and aims to provide more intensive and better coordinated services, targeting communities in need and helping detect problems earlier. This would bring the Government's overall commitment to mental health to $2.2 billion, including $571 million for severely mentally ill, $419 million for teens and young adults, $220 million for primary care and $32 million for the National Mental Health Commission. The Government says its measures will allow the 24,000 Australians with a severe or persistent mental illness to be able to access properly coordinated care and support.
This package would increase from 60 to 90 the number of headspace mental health services available to young people. The government will also invest a further $222.4 million to fund an extra 12 Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres to help 11,000 young Australians at risk of developing mental illness each year, and it will ask the states to fund 50 per cent of the cost of these new services.
Both these programs have been championed by former Australian of the Year and mental health expert Professor Patrick McGorry, who has been the most vocal critic of the government’s neglect of mental health, and the package includes many of the demands of other mental health advocates.
At least $344 million would be spent on streamlining the care of those with a chronic mental illness, setting up a single point of contact for those with a mental illness that will co-ordinate housing, health and social services. This single point of contact may be a Medicare Local service in the patient’s local area or it may be a non-government provider who tenders to do the job. The carers of those with a mental illness will benefit from an extra 1,100 respite services and 18,000 people with a mental illness will get access to a daily living program that will teach them life skills such as cooking. The government plans to double the number of services available under its Allied Psychological Services Program to assist 185,000 people in hard to reach areas.
A further $201 million will be provided to the states to drive further reform in state mental health services under a new national partnership agreement on mental health to be thrashed out at the June Council of Australian Governments Meeting. The states will also be asked to make bigger commitments to improve social housing for the mentally ill.
A Mental Health Commission will be set up to monitor how the mental health system is performing and one of its first tasks will be to provide a national report card on mental health by 2012. The National Health and Medical Research Council will get $26 million for mental health research projects.
The mental health revamp was widely welcomed by community and consumer groups yesterday but some medical leaders have criticized the means for slashing the Medicare payment to GPs for providing a care plan and providing other supports for mental health patients. The Medicare payment will drop from $160 to between $85 and $126, depending on the length of consultation.
The cut is part of a $580 million redirection from existing programs to other more targeted schemes and will include a reduction from 12 to 10 in the number of psychologist consultations Medicare will cover for mental health patients.
The Mental Health Minister, Mark Butler, defended the cuts saying the new fee Medicare payments still represented a 27 per cent premium, “vastly more” than the amounts GPs were paid for consultations dealing with physical ailments. Yesterday general practitioner groups were at odds over the impact of the measure. Emil Djakic, the chairman of the Australian General Practice Network, which supports the government's primary care reforms, said he did not oppose the savings measure and doubted whether it would significantly reduce GPs' involvement. “As a GP, I am going to appreciate the lament [about a rebate cut]. But at the same time, as a GP, I am asking where can the money be best spent?” Dr Djakic said the increased funding of $206 million for the separate Access to Allied Psychological Services scheme would “expand opportunities for better services for the more vulnerable and those at risk”.
However the president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Claire Jackson, said GPs, who must do a six- to eight-hour training course to qualify for the mental health premium payment, were being hit by a move that was likely to be a disincentive to GPs retaining their place at the centre of the mental health patient's treatment. Carol Bennett, the chief executive of the Consumer Health Forum, dismissed the criticism as “self-interest” over the removal of “largesse” paid to the GPs for seeing mental health patients.
The NSW Minister for Mental Health, Kevin Humphries, said he was disappointed that “a significant proportion of funding” announced was not new. “[And] most of that … will not be rolled out immediately,” he said.
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