Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to ask a question of the Minister for Health and Ageing relating to the government's programs in the area of mental health. It is an issue that I know affects many of us in this place. When I was 22, I had the experience of giving the eulogy of a friend of mine who had taken his own life. It is one of those experiences that you never forget and that you never want any other young person to have to go through. Andrew McIntosh was a good high school friend of mine. He was someone who drove a yellow Valiant Charger, loved music, but had the black dog inside him—unknown to all of us at the time. Thinking back, I wonder whether, if there had been better services available for people like Andrew, he might still be with us today.

I wanted to ask the minister to reflect on some of the programs in this area. I know the minister spoke in answer to the previous question about the EPPIC models for serious mental illness, and in the youth space there is also the headspace model for moderate ill health. I was hoping that the minister would reflect as well on some of the other interventions across the life cycle. We know, for example, that in the area of early childhood intervention there are programs that show promise. There is even a study, for example, which shows that expert observations of toddlers correlate with suicide attempts in adulthood, suggesting that there are hints of mental ill health that appear before the age of 12—the age at which headspace and EPPIC begin. Thinking right through the life cycle, we know that suicide peaks in the age range of 35 to 44. In fact, when I crunched the numbers it looked to me as though the typical Australian suicide victim was aged 44. We know that, for example, if we look at depressive episodes or anxiety disorders often brought on by workplace trauma, those are going to be things that appear later in life, in middle age, well after the age range of eligibility for headspace and EPIC.

There are other good things going on in the youth space, not just headspace and EPPIC but some of the youth targeted programs. I opened a day-long event in my electorate on 12 October last year which was titled 'Towards recovery: how do we talk about suicide?' The aim of the event was to encourage young people and community organisations working with young people to have a more positive conversation about suicide. Mike Zissler, the former CEO of Lifeline, told me when I met with him last year that the new research we have suggests that in the case of suicide it is important to use the 'S' word. If you are around somebody who you think might be contemplating self-harm, one of the best things you can do is ask, 'Are you thinking about suicide?' It is that destigmatising process that those in my electorate—the ACT Transcultural Mental Health Centre, the Mental Health Community Coalition and people like Simon Tatz, Brooke McKail and Simon Biereck—were trying to work through, aiming to ensure that young people and community organisations serving young people were up with the best research on how to address mental ill health.

The question that I really did want the minister to give me some more information about was the overall $2.2 billion national mental health reform package and how those reforms will affect Australia's mental health system. Particularly I wanted the minister to reflect on how the government's policy of looking at mental health right across the life cycle, not just in the 12 to 25 years age range, is producing the best results.

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