Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's World Mental Health Day. Today is about raising awareness of mental health issues. We're all good at talking about mental health, but what are we actually doing to improve Australia's mental health? This is a health issue that disproportionally impacts Tasmanians. At the last census, 8.8 per cent of Australians reported that they had a long-term mental health condition—that's about 2.3 million people—but in Tasmania the number of people who reported having a long-term mental health condition was 11.5 per cent.

One of the reasons for this is our spread-out population, which impacts people's ability to access the medical and psychological supports they need. It is not unusual for people to wait up to eight months to see a psychologist in Tasmania. Three months is a long time when you're unwell, but eight months is absolutely shocking. What is even more shocking is that our young people are waiting even longer to see school psychologists. This week the Mercury reported that 2,217 Tasmanian public school students were on waiting lists to see school psychologists. But we all know that number is probably higher, because many kids and their parents would have given up waiting and made appointments with private psychologists instead, if one was available. These students are waiting an average of 448 days for an initial psychologist assessment. That's close to 15 months. These are the kids who have mental health issues or may have suffered trauma, and they're being asked to wait 15 months to talk to someone about what's going on. Because they're young, they probably don't have all the tools they need to cope with being unwell on top of whatever else is going on for them in their world. They might disengage in class, or their behaviour might become difficult. They might even stop going to school altogether, leave home—or worse. None of that is okay. We end up with kids who feel stupid or feel they have failed, and then we're asking them to wait to see a doctor.

Imagine how hard it is, when you get to the point that you agree you need to talk to someone about what is going on, to find out you have to wait months and months for that appointment. We need more school psychologists. It would be great if each school had its own psychologist, instead of three or four schools having to share the one professional. But there aren't enough school psychologists to do that, so we also need more training pathways for psychologists. The University of Tasmania has tripled its intake for those who want to become school psychologists, and the UTAS psychology clinic is offering students free or low-cost therapy or cognitive assessment services when they're referred by their schools.

I know our healthcare professionals are working to the best of their ability with what they have, but I'm sure we can do more as a government to help them. At the 2024-25 budget estimates hearings I asked about the Postgraduate Psychology Incentive Program. This program, which is funded to the tune of $55 million over four years, covers clinical neuropsychology, clinical psychology, community psychology, counselling psychology and health psychology. That's a lot of psychologies. But it doesn't cover educational and developmental psychology, forensic psychology, organisational psychology or the master of professional practice, which is the only available pathway to general registration. I asked if there were plans to expand the eligibility criteria in future rounds of the Postgraduate Psychology Incentive Program so these important areas were not overlooked. The response I received didn't answer my question. So I'm asking again: will later rounds of this program cover more than just the five psychology streams listed and include the master of professional practice?

It will take years for us to see the results of uni pathways for people who want to be psychologists, so we need things we can do now. Let's look at expanding the Medicare rebate to include provisional psychologists. There are around 8,000 provisional psychologists across Australia, so getting them into the system sooner would definitely address these severe waiting times. In Tasmania that's an extra 150 professionals that would be able to provide subsidised sessions. Those young Tasmanians waiting over a year to see a school psychologist really need to know we're working on this. Let's show Australians, particularly these kids in our schools, that we want everyone to be okay and that their mental health is a priority to us.