Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Reid for raising the important issue of suicide prevention, and I acknowledge the member's experience as a clinician and researcher in mental health. As the member for Reid noted, last Thursday was World Mental Health Day. The theme of the day was 'Working together to prevent suicide'. Tragically, as others in this House have noted, in 2018, 3,046 Australians died by suicide; eight Australians die by suicide each day; men are three times more likely to die by suicide than women; and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more likely to die by suicide than the overall population.

The government's goal of reducing suicide to zero, along with the appointment of Christine Morgan as National Suicide Prevention Adviser to the Prime Minister, is commendable. Labor also welcomed the government's election commitments to expand and improve headspace services and other child and youth mental health services across Australia. However, as Suicide Prevention Australia noted when releasing its recent report, Turning Points:Imagine a World Without Suicide:

Suicide prevention is complex and it needs to be addressed as a whole-of-government issue because it's more than a health issue… a fragmented and mental illness-specific approach alone doesn't work.

Suicide Prevention Australia is:

…focused on an integrated approach to suicide prevention encompassing mental health, social, economic and community factors.

In September, the National Mental Health Commission released its National Report 2019 on Australia's mental health and suicide prevention system, which included a number of recommendations to improve outcomes. Like Suicide Prevention Australia, the National Mental Health Commission recommends a whole-of-government approach to mental health and suicide prevention. This broad approach ensures factors which impact individuals' mental health and wellbeing, such as housing, employment, education and social justice, are addressed alongside the delivery of mental health care.

I particularly want to focus today on the importance of addressing the social and economic factors that contribute to poor mental health and to increased rates of suicide. As it's known, suicide is an individual act—but the rate of suicide is the property of a community. I note that this week is Anti-Poverty Week. As Sir Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London, saysin The Health Gap: The Challenge of an Unequal Worldthat what goes on in the mind is profoundly influenced by 'the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age' and by 'the inequities in power, money and resources' that influence these conditions of daily life. If we want a well society with a diminishing suicide rate, we must address the social factors that contribute to suicidality. Affordable housing, access to quality education and access to affordable health care are all social determinants that contribute to an individual's sense of self-worth and overall wellbeing.

The pursuit of economic policies which further marginalise disadvantaged groups will undermine any attempts to reduce the rates of suicide, however well intentioned they may be. In The Health Gap, Sir Michael Marmot cites research by a group from Oxford University across a number of European countries which showed that rises in unemployment rates were correlated with rises in suicide rates, and, importantly, that the size of this effect was inversely related to the countries' level of spending on social protections, including unemployment benefits, active labour market programs, family support and health care.

I say again, as I said on World Mental Health Day: it's time for genuine bipartisan action on suicide prevention. In this spirit, I call on the government to look to the recommendations of the National Mental Health Commission 2019 report and: commit to the collection of high-quality data, particularly on the scope of disorders and high-risk community groups, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders; undertake a national mental health service gaps analysis and implement a national mental health workforce strategy; address the broader social and economic factors that contribute to mental ill-health and suicide; fix the NDIS so that the streamlined access for people with psychosocial disability is working, and keep delivering support for those who are ineligible for the NDIS; make sure all relevant government departments—health, education, justice, social services and housing—are responsible for the design and implementation of all future national suicide prevention strategies.

In closing: I spent 10 years of my life working in mental health inpatient units. I've seen the circumstances of people's lives—the crises and the tragedies that bring them in to mental health services. But what we must remember—and, in closing, I will again use the words of Sir Michael Marmot—is this: why treat people and send them back to the conditions that made them sick?

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