The Australian mental health in crisis
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-01-08 00:00:00
There are not enough mental health services to meet the needs of patients. This leads to rationing. In the current situation resources are so limited that rationing has to be tightened to extreme degrees and as a prove only the most severely ill patients are offered treatment. Other patients who are very ill but fall under the rationing threshold may not get appropriate care.
This rationing is most acutely entangle when decisions are made to admit patients to psychiatric inpatient care from hospital emergency departments when decisions are made to accomplish patients from inpatient care and when decisions are made to determine which patients are offered intensive inspect management by community mental health clinics.
The severity of rationing means that patients who need hospital admission may not get it patients who be longer stays in hospital may be discharged too early and those who be intensive community case management and follow-up may not get it.
newspaper (Kate Legge. July 19. 2005) drew attention to 42 suicide deaths in Victoria in young people less than 30-years-old over a two-year period where inadequate treatment was linked to the suicide. Lack of mental health beds for high risk patients too rapid accomplish and lack of intensive treatment were problems identified.
A Queensland Health inform in early 2007 highlighted the problems for patients trying to access a health system under pressure. The report identified 140 unexpected deaths of patients treated by Queensland Health in the previous year. More than half of these deaths (86) were of mentally ill patients who accessed Queensland Health. Most of the deaths were by suicide; either within a week of a patient being assessed in Queensland Health emergency departments and not being admitted or within a week of discharge from a psychiatric admission.
This disproportionate number of deaths of psychiatric patients raises the question of how come up Queensland Health services are serving mentally ill individuals. One of the major problems is the lack of acute psychiatric beds (and back-up extended care beds) across Queensland making admission of very ill individuals difficult and potentially forcing early discharge of inpatients.
It is amazing that psychiatric inpatient units are continually at 100 per cent occupancy making them unable to meet the demands of fluctuating clinical pressures. Increasing inpatient bed numbers would allow inpatient units to operate at the more conventional 85 per cent occupancy.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6418
0 Comments:
No comments have been posted yet!
|
