Peter Boyle spoke to Ryan Capozzi from Solidarity Minded, a mutual aid group specialising in mental health that is planning to work with Yezidi survivors of the Daesh (Islamic State) massacre in Iraqi Kurdistan nine years ago.
mental health
A new report exposes the drug trials and other medical experiments conducted without consent and with the backing of United States government intelligence agencies, reports Binoy Kampmark.
Mental health workers Dr Nikola Leka and Sarah Ellyard spoke to Green Left about the mental health crisis exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The harrowing global effects of COVID-19 have been accompanied by a crisis in mental health, with levels of psychological distress and demand for mental health services growing exponentially. Tom Eccles reports that young people are especially at risk.
Children and young people are experiencing a mental health epidemic. Markela Panegyres argues that resources are not being made available either for treatment or to tackle some of the causes.
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown up many surprises, but none as sickening as the political right pretending to care about people’s mental health, argues Dechlan Brennan.
Those with a psychosocial disability are being failed by the government’s arbitrary decision-making on who qualifies for vital health and community services under the COVID-19 lockdown, writes Marie Butler-Cole.
Community mental health services in a large regional hospital have been severely reduced, just as they are needed more than ever, reports Kerry Smith.
Chanting “Fund the gap or we’ll be back,” more than 200 health workers protested outside Victorian health minister Martin Foley’s office on August 16 to demand the Labor state government restore funding to community mental health services. Services have been severely affected by the state government’s decision to cut $75 million from mental health funding.
In Western Australia, mental illness is the second-highest cause of disease for women and the fourth-highest cause for men.
Premier Colin Barnett has responded by publishing a green paper for public discussion for a new Mental Health Act. The proposed act contains provisions that would improve the rights of people subjected to a Compulsory Treatment Order (CTO). But it negates those same provisions by allowing the treating psychiatrist to simply ignore them.
Mental health workers voted to escalate industrial action in two weeks unless Ted Baillieu's Coalition government begins to seriously negotiate with their union.
The Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) covers psychiatric nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, psychologists and support staff. The Australian Nursing Federation covers some mental health nurses as well.
The Tasmanian Labor-Greens coalition government has forged ahead with savage cuts to the state’s health services, causing anger, frustration and despair in the community. More than 7600 people have been languishing on the elective surgery waiting list. Yet the government said on October 4 that it would cut elective surgery by $58 million over the next three years.
This will cause 130 health jobs to be lost and wards to be closed in all the state’s big hospitals. It is possible that only emergency cases will be dealt with in future.
