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Wanting to help all people with mental illness

GavinleeSenior Contributor25 Aug 2016, 11:23 pm AEST

Wanting to help all people with mental illness

firstly this forum may have help a while ago. What a great idea.

I want to know people's thoughts on something I wish to take to parliament.

As people with mental illness we can be caught in a catch 22 situation, need to work to afford private health insurance, can't work because of a mental health issue, so no private health insurance.

I am wanting to propose a supliment for private health insurance for people on DSP who suffer mental illness. Surely this would save the government money in the public sector (which only band aids things anyway). Also with the right treatment from private hospitals this may even help people get back to work, saving the government money with DSP.

At the moment from what I have seen, people go on DSP, they then scrap by week after week and can afford the required help, therefore DSP is the rest of their lives.

Is that what the government wants? It is certainly not what most of the people I know with a mental illness wants.

I am one of the lucky ones that could afford private insurance and had access to right treatment, but not everyone is as lucky I a was.

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In response to: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

GavinleeSenior Contributor26 Aug 2016, 7:33 pm AEST

Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

@BlueBay O think you should double check on the amount of hours you need to do to be covered.
I am also with Medibank and my group is 10-2:30 with 2 x 15 breaks and 45 lunch.

O know I would be lost without going every week.
I'm happy to provide more info on where I attend etc if that helps when you call Medibank.
I know it is classed as a full day, may be that's just the hospital charging a full day and me being there half a day lol
A good private hospital will find a way around things to help. Eg: I had TMS treatment (Transcranial magnetic stimulation), this is not covered by any health insurance at the moment, so my hospital bought a machine and offer it as a free service to in patients lol
Shows how stupid it all is, so instead of a health insurance paying $300 for a half hour treatment (guessing the price), they pay $725 for me to stay the night.

Have you looked at TMS?
It's non invasive (unlike ECT) and seems to work very well for most people. Worked great for me

In response to: Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

BlueBaySenior Contributor26 Aug 2016, 7:40 pm AEST

Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

Thanks @Gavinlee I will double check with Medibank Private. If it's only 3 hours I can do but not a whole day. It really tires me out. I will go into the office and ask; it's just that the hospital are telling me this, so i don't know what's going on. You would think Medibank private would want their customers to get well mentally and physically.

I know my hospital say that lunch is not incuded in the hours of group therapy. Not sure if that's true, i am definitely enquiring on monday.

In response to: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

GavinleeSenior Contributor26 Aug 2016, 7:48 pm AEST

Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

Can I ask which hospital?
I don't want to know where you live lol
But what area roughly?

In response to: Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

CherryBombSenior Contributor26 Aug 2016, 7:57 pm AEST

Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

Hey @BlueBay and @Gavinlee

I just need to jump in here and point out that we can't share information about what hospitals or sessions you attend as this might compromise anonymity. See community guidelines for more info

Also, one thing to be mindful of is that insurance providers can differ in costs and rebates, depending on lots of different things, such as location, age, type of cover and policy etc. So please keep this in mind.

Cheers,

CherryBomb

In response to: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

GavinleeSenior Contributor26 Aug 2016, 8:03 pm AEST

Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

@CherryBomb sorry for that.
Yes I do realise that health insurance policies are different, it can even depend on when you started the policy.

I was just trying to help, also information like this is very interesting to me, it's more to discuss with the Federal MP.
Didn't realise we couldn't say which hospital we attended. Sorry

In response to: Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

CherryBombSenior Contributor26 Aug 2016, 8:15 pm AEST

Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

Hi @Gavinlee,

No need to apologise! I'm Sorry. I just read over my last post and realised that it may have sounded short. I wrote it in a rush as things are quite busy behind the scene tonight. But please know, I understand that conversations like these are always based on good intentions, and people are wanting to help each other.

Often people don't realise when there's a guidelines issue. We (the SANE mods) never view this as a deliberate thing. You hadn't broken any guidelines, I was trying to jump in quickly to prevent it from happening, which is probably why my post seemed short. If only we had tone and body language in here!

@Gavinlee, I've been moderating the last two nights, and have been reading your posts, and am honestly enjoying the support that you're giving to other people on here. You are breath of fresh on here, so please don't feel discouraged by this. You raise some really great and important points about health cover, the DSP, and the public health system - all very challenging to navigate your way around. So I hope you continue this conversation.

CherryBomb

In response to: Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

BlueBaySenior Contributor26 Aug 2016, 8:41 pm AEST

Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

Oops @CherryBomb i am sorry, sometimes i get carried away and write things that i shouldn't .

In response to: Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

CherryBombSenior Contributor26 Aug 2016, 8:45 pm AEST

Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

It's all good @BlueBay! I hope I didn't make the conversation go off track.

In response to: Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

BlueBaySenior Contributor26 Aug 2016, 8:48 pm AEST

Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

No @CherryBomb it's just me thinking that i am in big trouble!! That's my BPD catastrophising things.

All good

In response to: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

GavinleeSenior Contributor27 Aug 2016, 12:11 am AEST

Re: Wanting to help all people with mental illness

@Cherryblossem you didn't upset me in anyway and I totally understood what you were saying.
As @BlueBay said, think we do get carried away sometimes, I think for me because I'm new it's great to see people being so open.

I would just like to give everyone something to think about and have a little laugh over the weekend.
My reasoning for mental health issues is this- the so called "normal people use 10% of their brain, I think we use more, but because our teachers only used 10% of their brain we just got frustrated over the years lol

Have a great weekend everyone

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