Australia's GG calls for new approach on suicide.

@ Daitengu,
Explanation: Thank for your reply!

Personal Disclosure: It is a sad fact that many people with long term mental health issue commit suicide when they are completely rational and lucid ... they unfortunately sanely realize there is no prospect of a cure and hence no hope ... and they lose it basically!

As a customer of Australian mental health services for the past 20 yrs I am practically at the end of my tether.

Print Email Facebook Twitter More Comments Leaked Federal Government mental health report recommends redirecting $1 billion from acute hospital care to community-based services [abc.net.au]

Mental health review head says changes up to a decade overdue [abc.net.au]

Leaked mental health review is scathing of system's shortcomings and calls for $1b funding shift to community care [smh.com.au]

Now here is how that 1 billion $ breaks down ... just off the top of my head ... There are 1/4 million mental health patients on welfare in Australia and it cost $10,000 to admit them to the mental health wards at the main hospitals for a 9day admission and there are 2000 mental health beds Australia wide meaning a max possible of 80,000 admissions a year total.

That $10,000 covers food and cleaning costs and pays the nurses and the Dr's [about 40,000 all up 35,000 nurses and 3,000 others and 2000 Psychiatrists total Australia wide] on duty in that ward.

A ward generally has 30beds .. 10 of which are High dependency beds ... and its one nurse per 5 patients. 3 x 8hr shifts 5-6 days per week.

Removing this funding would put 40,000 VITAL PEOPLE with highly educated skill-sets out of work AND put at risk up to 80,000 mental health patients a year.

Each Psychiatrist has about 125+ patients each and they generally see them once every 90 days and only for 15-30mins max, leaving patients shortchanged on service, and therefor they are completely overworked and underpaid and don't start me on how much the nurses are overworked and understaffed and underpaid because you will never hear the god damned end of it.

Australia IMPORTS people to pick our god damned vegetables and butcher our meat and yet we are turning back asylum seekers when we need more people.

Again don't start me on the cost of higher education trapping these well educated people into a lifetime of debt which makes them unwilling to speak out in fear of their jobs.

Long story short ..not enough people, time or money and hence the only logical reasonable conscientious thing I can do is opt permanantly out of the rat race and bring some financial and temporal relief to the entire system.

To be critically morbid ... I am expected to live about another 40 yrs on pension of about $20,000 a year + extra costs like mental ward admissions and ongoing medicare costs as I age {example: i have eye surgery cor cateracts in 1 month time.. estimated cost to medicare is $5000 per eye [2.5times what the government website says it costs] and so IF the Gov allows me to die from my planned hunger-strike they will be saving approximately $800,000 to 1 Million $ in the long run.

Half of the issue is merely housing the 1/4million mental health patients in the wider community due to lack of public housing kept deliberately low to bouy up the Australia Housing market values which affect banking interest rates and hence affect the wider economy disproportionately hence greed being a big issue.

I see no ways forward I just see legalized assisted suicide as the only reasonable option left.

Note suicide is illegal in all states and territories of Australia EXCEPT for Victoria which recognized it as a Human right at the state level.

I hope this post has revealed some deep issues from the point of view as an insider to the system.