Mental illness can come and go throughout a person’s life, triggered by factors such as stress, discrimination, social exclusion, unhealthy lifestyle, violence or risk of violence and physical ill-health.
                                                            - World Health Organisation

Over a lifetime, mental illness affects nearly half of us. So when our mental health system doesn’t work the ripple effect means it impact on all of us.

Australia’s National Mental Health Commission (NMHC) undertook a review of mental health programmes and concluded that the highest priority was to invest in community based services. This is how we can “prevent illness, keep people well, support recovery and enable people to lead contributing lives.”

The human cost of not addressing these issues impacts on those living with mental ill-health and their carers.

The NMHC review found many areas in our mental health system that needed fixing. While it may be challenging we can start to do something about this now by addressing these urgent priorities.

Community Based Crisis Respite

In mid-2014, twenty-four new residential Crisis Respite beds and ten home-based support beds were introduced to the South Australian mental health system. This new service type diverted individuals away from Emergency Departments and Inpatient services.

This respite service is another cost effective measure that reduces the flow into and through an expensive emergency department. However funding for the Crisis Respite Service will cease on 30 June 2016.

We are calling on the SA Government to commit to finding solutions that enable the Crisis Respite Service to remain a key feature of the SA mental health system well into the future.

Intensive Home Based Support Service (IHBSS)

Intensive home-based services provide time-limited psychosocial support to assist people to move from hospital to home.

Evaluation of the innovative IHBSS program showed in a 12 month period over 535 South Australian mental health consumers reduced their use of hospital services from 16.6 to 6.3 days.

Funding for the IHBSS program ceased on 30 June 2015 leaving a significant gap in support available to consumers.

We are calling on the SA Government to re-establish an intensive home-based support service that provides tailored and flexible support for people to assist them to move earlier from hospital to home.

Improve access and quality of services for people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

As I watch our own daughter battle with her weight and diabetes as a result of her mental illness and the medications she is taking, I have often thought it is like watching her slowly dying. Despite the fact that we had the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, this seemed to be ignored, and when her symptoms escalated all that was done was to increase her medication and still we were told she was just "behaving badly”. This is why some of us are screaming at the mental health department and getting so angry.                                                                                                                               - Carer 2016

Borderline Personality Disorder is a highly complex condition with significant consequences across several areas of an individual’s life. BPD is often hard to diagnose yet the potential consequences of the condition include loss of productivity, social and occupational breakdown, carer stress, family breakdown and risk to self and others.

Emergency Departments are often the first port of call for people with Borderline Personality Disorder, which places significant strain on existing resources. For a long time, people living with BPD and their carers continue to tell us their diagnosis means discrimination and exclusion.

We would like the treatment of BPD be acknowledged as a human right and those living with it treated with respect and compassion.

The SA Department of Health and Ageing produced a report including recommendations on how to improve BPD services in SA. We are calling on the SA Government to implement the recommendations in their BPD report.