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Our Position |
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Our Position on Mental Health
Mental health broadly describes the level of our psychological well-being and inherently provides a basis to an understanding of our own identity, whether it be as a citizen of society or as an individual within a circle of family and friends.
The status of our psychological well-being however is conditional to an infinite range of factors. Form basic daily anxiety to the more serious problems of alcohol and drug addiction to suicide, mental health continues to be an issue of concern today more than ever.
The increasing problems and lack of proper awareness of mental health has generated a class of individuals that have had their voices and rights dismissed. This has evoked an active need for the proper and necessary treatment of individuals concerned with mental health problems.
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Justice Action's particular concerns are with the use of prisons to solve mental health problems. There is an urgent need to create community based care, with the support of families and people with experience, instead of locking away the problems, medicating individuals at the cost of $70,000 a person a year. The stigma that surrounds mental health has to be reduced so people who have mental illness in our community can be effectively treated. It is the position of Justice Action and our allies that putting these disadvantaged individuals in prison is not the answer.
The Burdekin inquiry into mental health in 1994 concluded that mental health has been criminalised in Australia. The prison system has become the inappropriate de facto treatment centre for many mentally ill people. A 1997 investigation into the CHS mental health services recognises that the law must be changed as Òthe present arrangements restrict the opportunity to provide appropriate medical care and rehabilitation to those offenders suffering from mental disorder and any contemplated changes to improve services for mentally disordered offenders may be facilitated by changes in the law to the benefit of society and individuals. (The Blueglass report) That report also notes the appallingly low level of psychiatric staff and occupational therapists.
The First National Conference of Community Based Justice Activists (1996) resolved that the health care system should be used for the mentally ill, not the criminal justice system. Justice Action is one of the national coordinators for tackling the issue of criminalising mental health and is involved in negotiations at a national level on spotlighting this issue.
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Mental Health
