Tag Archives: Australia

Politics and mental health a poor mix

Imagine a tribunal where the public could challenge clinical decisions by neurosurgeons or cardiologists. It would be ridiculous. But mental health is different. Unlike other medical specialties, it resembles law or politics: fields where subtle variations in the interpretation of a word can alter the entire trajectory of a patient’s treatment.

That’s why the right to appeal clinical decisions by mental health professionals through a tribunal, announced recently by the NSW government, met with public approval. Mental health possesses a built-in capacity for abuse that is greater than in other areas of medicine. A patient’s psychiatric diagnosis has enormous cultural power in many other fields, from the marketing of antidepressant medications, to general practice, disability claims and legal proceedings.

Australia—Deaths in mental health facilities: unexpected, unnatural and violent

THIRTY-SIX people died unexpected, unnatural or violent deaths in Victorian mental health facilities between 2008 and 2010, Coroners Court files reveal.

Data released to The Saturday Age by the Coroner’s Prevention Unit reveals 119 of the 502 coronial inquests held in Victoria between 2008 and 2010 involved people with diagnosed mental illnesses.

Of those 119 mental health coronial cases, almost a third related to the deaths of patients while they were being treated at state-run and private mental health facilities.Other figures from the Department of Health show 975 people under the care of Victoria’s mental health system have died unnatural, unexpected or violent deaths between 2006 and 2010.

‘Former Australian of the Year’ Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Accused of Conflict of Interest

PSYCHIATRISTS, psychologists and patients’ groups say there is a growing backlash against the federal government’s mental health reforms and have accused its expert adviser, former Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry, of a conflict of interest.

Several mental health specialists have told The Sunday Age the focus on early intervention for adolescents and young adults has been ”massively oversold” by the ”McGorry lobbying machine”.

They claim he used his position on the government’s mental health expert working group to recommend funding for programs he founded.

DSM 5 Will Further Inflate The ADD Bubble

We are already in the midst of a false epidemic of ADD. Rates in kids that were 3-5% when DSM IV was published in 1994 have now jumped to 10%. In part this came from changes in DSM IV, but most of the inflation was caused by a marketing blitz to practitioners that accompanied new on-patent drugs amplified by new regulations that also allowed direct to consumer advertising to parents and teachers. In a sensible world, DSM 5 would now offer much tighter criteria for ADD and much clearer advice on the steps needed in its differential diagnosis. This would push back ,however feebly, against the skilled and well financed drug company sell. DSM 5 should work hard to improve its text, not play carelessly with the ADD criteria in a way that may unleash a whole set of dreadful unintended consequences- unneeded medication, stigma, lowered expectations, misallocation of resources, and contribution to the illegal secondary market peddling stimulants for recreation or performance enhancement.

The DSM 5 child and adolescent work group has perversely gone just the other way. It proposes to make an already far too easy diagnosis much looser.

Australia: New laws to ban electric shocks on children

ELECTRIC shock therapy on young children will be banned and psychiatrists could be jailed for carrying out the controversial treatment on teenagers and adults without strict legal checks, under proposed legislation. Under a review of Victoria’s Mental Health Act, new legislation has been drafted that would outlaw electroconvulsive therapy, also known as ECT, for children aged 12 and under.