Key Points
- A roundtable of experts are meeting in Canberra today to discuss mental health care reform.
- Elizabeth Young has spoken about her family’s struggle to access mental health support following her daughter’s death in the Bondi Junction attack.
- Mental health organisations have endorsed a series of requests before the roundtable commences.
Mental health experts are meeting in Canberra to discuss gaps in care for people living with complex conditions in the wake of the Bondi Junction attack.
The roundtable, hosted by Wentworth MP Allegra Spender and the Black Dog Institute, will discuss critical issues in mental health care with advocates from mental health organisations.
Elizabeth Young, the mother of Jade Young, who died in the recent stabbing attack in Bondi Junction, is also attending the events in Canberra today and spoke at a press conference on Wednesday morning.
To highlight inconsistencies in care, she shared her family’s struggles to find mental health support following her daughter’s death.
She said while her relatives in NSW received immediate and ongoing psychological support from specialist mental health practitioners, her son in Tasmania “received no such treatment”.
Young called for a coordinated national approach to mental health care reform and highlighted that, despite numerous inquiries, reports and strategies, “Australia is still vacillating”.
“Please, in the long shadow of the horror of Jade’s death, I beg you, as the voice of three shattered households, please actually do something about the discrepancies, the disparities, the inconsistencies in current mental health funding.”
Kerry Hawkins, president of the Western Australian Association for Mental Health, also highlighted the stigma faced by people living with complex mental health conditions, as well as the challenges faced by families and carers.
Hawkins said she has lived experience in her family of issues with the mental health care system, and stressed the need to “address the discrimination that exists towards people who live with profound distress”.
“I would just highlight again that family members who walk alongside people with these kinds of distress are also completely unsupported. Hundreds of thousands of Australians live in quiet despair with emotional exhaustion, physical exhaustion and financial exhaustion.”
Mental health organisations have also endorsed a series of requests before the roundtable commences, including calls for long-term funding and reform, a full-day meeting of mental health ministers, and the inclusion of mental health reform in the upcoming National Health Reform Agreement.
On 13 April, a 40-year-old man, Joel Cauchi, stabbed and killed six people and injured a further 12 in the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre.
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