This is why people die from suicide and nobody talks about it. Enough is enough. This problem needs to be addressed.  

I have experienced long term, chronic mental health since the age of 14. I am 23, partially recovered and am now equipped with my knowledge and life experience to know a change needs to happen for the safety of our population. I am demanding change in the way mental health patients are treated, triaged and the support they are given within psychiatric care. 

Since the integration of psychiatric care into general hospitals in the 90's, several bed availabilities and services have been discarded and replaced with inadequate resources in community care settings. The fallout of this is that many people are falling through the cracks of psychiatric care often leading to death. 

This lack of bed availability forces health professionals to triage patients on a safety-risk scale which is harmful. According to a 2013 Australian Parliamentary Senate Meeting, due to this ruthless form of decision making, people that were in good faith trying to seek help for their condition were turned away as not being deemed a high enough risk and subsequently went to harm themselves or others. 

I am calling on the Australian Federal Health Minister: Hon Greg Hunt MP and The Health Minister for NSW: Brad Hazzard to urgently initiate change in the way people are triaged in the state public mental health facilities, accommodate more bed availabilities and create a more therapeutic environment for wellness like a step down program for chronic conditions such as halfway houses so people are not suddenly pushed out of acute care, back into society with limited support.

The solution is more funding is needed for an increase in bed availability and an increase in therapeutic interventions in the public mental health service as outlined above.  An influx in trained professionals specialising in therapies like Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy and Early Intervention Services and a movement to irradiate this harmful and detrimental safety-risk triage modality causing a stigmatising message that you don't matter unless you're on your death bed.