Since our last blog post illustrated the problem developing countries currently face in dealing with mental illnesses, this blog post will focus on mental health issues in a highly developed country, Australia.
Perhaps the biggest difference between developing and developed countries with respect to mental health care is the budget they spend on it. While highly developed countries such as Australia spend 332 dollar per capita per year (AIHW, 2014) on health care of which 7.64% on mental health (‘’Mental Health Atlas’’, 2011), Somalia’s mental health expenditures are less than 0.01% of the total health budget (‘’Mental Health Atlas’’, 2011), which is 17 dollar per capita per year (‘’Somalia: statistics, n.d.).
This huge difference with respect to mental health care expenditure translates into equally remarkable differences in the availability of mental health facilities between Somalia and Australia. Apart from the fact that there are dramatically fewer facilities available to the Somali population, it seems that especially children and adolescents have to suffer. This group does not have any exclusive facilities or beds reserved for them in countries like Somalia while in Australia 215 out of 1000 beds are reserved for this specific group (‘’Mental Health Atlas’’, 2011).
The question however is whether the increased spending and the greater number of facilities also have the adequate result when it comes to actually helping those who suffer from a mental illness. According to a newspaper article posted on news.com.au (Feb. 23, 2015) this is not the case. In the article (the link to the newspaper article is posted below) the authors state that ‘’half the young people with a mental illness are unemployed and many are stuck in the prison system because 70% of them don’t get help from mental health services’’. Furthermore it is mentioned that ‘’Australia’s failure to help young people with a mental illness is costing the country a staggering 6.2 billion dollar a year in health, welfare, business and prison costs.’’
The article thus brings the issue forward that an increased expenditure and amount of facilities do not always directly lead to equally superior treatment of those in need. Moreover, in order to solve this issue it is crucial to provide more young Australians with the help they need. One of the ways in which this could be achieved is by online counseling, as suggested in the article. By ‘’first offer[ing] people the lowest cost evidence based online self care’’ they can ‘’progressively move up to more serious levels of care if needed’’.
Including online youth mental health services might thus be an interesting and promising way forward in order to also reach the 70% that currently do not get the help they deserve.
Karoline Mess
The newspaper article:
‘’Mental health failure: the 6.2 billion dollar taxpayer bill, as sufferers linger on the dole and in prison’’
Sources:
AIHW 2014. Health expenditure Australia 2012–13. Health and welfare expenditure series 52. Cat. no. HWE 61. Canberra: AIHW.
Mental Health Atlas 2011. Departmentment of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, World Health Organization.
Country statistics for Australia and Somalia. World Health Organization. Retrieved from: http://www.who.int/countries/som/en/
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