Question. TW

Totally Agree. @Former-Member

Maybe the health people figured out it was getting to epidemic proportions, and they panicked and forgot that all the remedies and empty or full rooms with uniformed peeps might not be necessary if they could get to root causes.

Its taken me a long time to come any where near close to proper or appropriate discussions and interventions and I have been very patient and persistent with the system. How on earth they think that Emergency Rooms are the place to manage it is beyond me.

Community Mental Health seemed like a good idea but not if meds are the only thing on offer. My opinion only.

And if there is even community MH and they don't only treat exclusive problems like the one where I live does..... I guess that makes sense, unfortunately. How dysfunctional our MH system is has always boggled me, in all the 20+ years I've been in it for. I've learned to play by their rules and how to avoid them, but that is hardly actually useful.

Hi @Former-Member

My understanding of the root reason for the public mental health system is to make sure a patient is not at risk of harming themselves nor at risk of harming others.

Once a patient proves this, then they free to go.

In the past their have been many attempts to 'help' patients. But in the late 70's all the mental health facilities (insane/mental asylums) around the Western World were closed down. Researchers told government that insane/mental asylums were more detrimental to the mental health of the patient than a help to the mental health of the patient. ('One flew over the Cuckoo's nest' is about this.) In NSW, all the then mental health patients were given their own places to live, none of them stayed in those places and they all ended up on the street, homeless. The homeless are still their on the street, out the back of Kings Cross, all around Wooloomoolloo, St James station, Martin Place.

Is there true prevention?

SANE and all other such organizations exist to try and prevent mental illness from detrimentally affecting the patients life and to try and make a patient able to cope and live in general society. The methods to do this start on page 22 of the Understanding how best to respond to the needs of Australians living with personality disorder document written by SANE. But I don't think the methods stop mental illness, I think they are thought up and applied in order to get patients to have some kind of meaningful life in general society.

Also, the 'cure' for mental illness is that the patient no longer fits the requirements set out in the definition of the mental health diagnosis. Therefore, once a patient crosses the metaphorical line that has been drawn in the metaphorical sand, they are diagnosed with a mental illness, once they step back over that metaphorical line, they no longer have that mental illness. It's all arbitrary.

After reading the above document, many patients get help by having it pointed out to them that they have a mental health problem. Just knowing this can be a major factor in relieving the problem.

But for many other patients, they need a lot more help. Page 72, the closing statements of the document, actually points out what you are also saying. The problem is, Australia just doesn't have the services nor the money to pay for long term help of patients. So SANE does recogise what you and many others need, but they just don't have the services yet.

Where I live doesn't even do that. If they did, I would be in a psych ward.

Also I was just referring to suicide, self-harm and other risk to self problems, not mental illness as a whole. I doubt there will ever be a cure for mental illness, or any actually beneficial treatment for long term complex mental health either. Don't need to be told how the system works. I asked why.

@Former-Member

It sounds like you live in a small town where everybody knows you.

No I don't, actually. I live in a suburb of a non-capital city, about 4 km from a small, rapidly developing CBD. I go out of my way to make sure people do not know me for various reasons, because that's my preference. However, like I said, I have been in the mental health system (and various others, or was) for most of my nearly 25 years of life. So all of the local public mental health services know me, in fact, most of the public mental health sector full stop in my entire city do, and I have a very extensive reputation with them.

Same goes for a lot of other govt services because I was raised by the state as a result of my biological mother and father having complex mental illness, albeit different ones than I do. They also all know me extensively because I have been out as a transsexual man since I was young. All of that leads to where I am now as far as those types of relationships are concerned, although they are ones I would much rather not have because they have created a very long list of trauma for me, and my reputation is horrible and disgusting amongst them.

I've read that document too, great in theory, in practice, about as realistic as unicorns.

@Former-Member

"great in theory, in practice, about as realistic as unicorns"

That's how it is with all Government departments.

Maybe it is a plus for the US system that their health care is a private enterprise. They have no choice but to run it professionally and at a profit, if not, the company will just disappear.

It would be interesting if Bernie Sanders becomes the next president of the US, because he will make health care public. And then we can find out which one works best, a public health care system or a private health care system.

But back to you.

I guess you have a delema.

Yes, it is indeed.

And yes, I do, and I always have.

And people wonder why I am so dismissive, lacking in belief and hope that help is even real and why I am so anti-dependent and easily drawn away from them because their message is nothing but smoke to me, why I do not trust anything or anyone other than myself and why I am so defensive for my own protection when people try to give me shit I explicitly tell them will cause me to turn my back and never return.

Why I so rarely bother to reach out and why it is so exponentially difficult for me to care about my own welfare and health and that it is being harmed. Why would I and why should I when all I get is non-answers at best? It seems all too easy for people who don't need the help to deny the truth, that there is none, must be convenient to be in that position, but it sure ain't to be in mine. I wish I could help and rely on myself because I much prefer to do so, but I cannot, and this type of result (among other far worse results) is the core of why I absolutely despise dependence in any form.

But whatever, nothing can be done about it, as per usual. They can go ahead and deny that, but I won't because I know the truth.