$7m mental health boost
CONSTRUCTION has started on a new $7m Mental Health Crisis Stabilisation service at Robina Hospital to offer Gold Coasters a more “homelike” environment.
Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said incorporating 12 chairs in a new purpose-built building, the service would deliver an important expansion of mental health support services already offered.
“This is in addition to an extra eight mental health beds being delivered within the existing Robina Hospital,” she said. “This will be one of the first health services in Australia to introduce a crisis stabilisation facility and model of care, which offers a more suitable environment for treatment than the Emergency Department.
It’s due for completion in mid-2021.
FIERCE debate has erupted over the use of mobile phones in Gold Coast’s state high schools – but not everyone is convinced a blanket ban is the answer.
Dr Kathryn Modecki, a senior lecturer at Griffith University’s School of Applied Psychology, said parents needed to play a larger role in educating children on having a “balanced diet” in regards to phone usage.
The Bulletin this week reported that some students were using phones to hot spot laptops to watch pornography in class, and that video footage of teachers was being used to make “embarrassing” TikTok videos.
“I don’t think they (students) should be in class on their phones, but rigorous studies out of the US have proven that banning them doesn’t work,” Dr Modecki said. “It’s about moderation and encouraging students to use their phones responsibly.”
Professor Marilyn Campbell, from Queensland University of Technology, said there would always be children who did the wrong thing, whether it was refusing to wear a helmet on a bike or searching for pornography at school.
“There are kids who are going to take anything we give them and do the wrong thing, so why would you ban something?
“We’ve got to be able to teach children to have a moral compass. Banning phones in schools is just simplistic, authoritarian and totally unnecessary.”
However, Tamborine Mountain State High School principal Tracey Brose said a blanket ban had resulted in improved social skills and less bullying.
“This policy has been in place in our school for the past 20 years. Our students hand mobile phones in upon arrival at school to a mobile phone storage room which is locked and under camera surveillance,” she said.
Queensland Teachers Union’s Gold Coast organiser Jodie McFadden said mobile phone policies should be a decision made in consultation with parents and teachers.
Anecdotally, union members said that mobile phones were a distraction in class.