Doc’s concern about mental health ‘crisis’
HIGH- PROFILE psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg has returned to his hometown to help boost stocks of mental health first aiders.
Dr Carr-Gregg, alongside executive coach and author Brigitte Johnson, facilitated the Mental Health First Aid Australia course at Geelong’s Eastern Hub last Thursday and Friday. Participants came from as far as New Zealand to learn practical steps on how to approach and assist people dealing with anxiety, depression, psychosis and substance abuse issues.
Dr Carr-Gregg believes major organisations should have at least 20 per cent of their workforce trained in mental health first aid, with the qualification still uncommon.
“Most organisations would have first aiders, but they don’t have mental health first aiders,” he said.
Dr Carr-Gregg, who was raised in Highton and is a patron of local mental health organisation Read the Play, said Australia is in the grips of a mental health “crisis”.
“The system is so profoundly broken that the only way we’re going to really affect this is to put massive amounts of money into where it’s needed,” Dr Carr-Gregg said.
“We need to do a thorough analysis, which is what the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System is about, looking at areas of need.”
He said emergency departments needed to be “massively resourced”.
And he said the number of subsidised sessions patients could access with psych — ologists needed to be extended.
Subsidised sessions with a psychologist are capped at 10 per calendar year under a Medicare mental health plan.
“We need to take rationing out of the mental health care system, the Medicare system,” Dr Carr-Gregg said.
“People should be able to see psychologists until they don’t need to see psychologists anymore.”