29 April 2021
The ANMF (SA Branch) CEO/Secretary Adj Associate Professor Elizabeth Dabars AM has condemned the Government following Wednesday’s “extremely disappointing” mental health workshop for “lack of outcome, commitment or time frame”.
The think-tank forum involving mental health experts, advocates and bureaucrats was set up by Health Minister Stephen Wade to act on calls for urgent action on the mental health crisis in this state following a chorus of criticism from SA Health whistleblower Adjunct Professor John Mendoza, the ANMF and other unions and medical professionals.
Speaking after the 12-hour forum, Ms Dabars hit out at the Government’s lack of urgency on the issue of mental health.
“We are very, very concerned that lack of action in this area will simply allow a major catastrophe to occur,’’ she told FIVEAA.
“We’ve got a lot of the issues on the table but the fact remains there is still no action. It does seem like talking to a brick wall really.
“This is totally unfair from a consumer perspective, those people who are stuck in an emergency department with no available bed,’’ Ms Dabars said.
“It is unfair for those people who are suffering in silence in the community and the staff who are just overworked, overburdened and really themselves so stressed about how they can deliver care and at the moment they simply cannot provide adequate care.
“From our perspective, and I said this directly to the Minister, he was elected to govern and we actually need his political leadership and will to make the changes that are required in the system.’’
Ms Dabars, Professor Mendoza and other leading advocates for mental health care have written a joint letter to Minister Wade expressing their disappointment about the workshop and to request an urgent meeting to outline what measures must be taken to address the state’s health crisis. See the letter
here.
The letter acknowledges our full support for Professor Mendoza’s
10-point plan, and outlines the supplementary plan provided by the ANMF and other organisations.
Professor Mendoza, who quit as executive director of mental health and prison health services at CALHN this month, was similarly scathing following the workshop, tweeting: “I can confidently say that the situation for frontline clinicians come 1 July, nothing will be different – what a missed opportunity.
“Having listened to over 90 minutes of ‘workshop feedback’ there was almost nothing about the COVID mental health surge in demand.
“Lives will be lost. Careers ended through unrelenting stress.”
He told InDaily all his hopes for mental health reform had evaporated: “Gone. Totally.”
“It was a classic play from bureaucrats handbook on applying the dead hand of government,” he said.
“Nothing will be different come 1 July. Patients will still be stranded in EDs for more than 24hrs every day, some will be there 2-5 days; there will still be people air transferred from around the state waiting for psychiatric intensive care beds being subject to violence and trauma; there will still be staff dreading going to work everyday.”