PSYCHIATRY - AND ITS DRAIN ON THE AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC PURSE

7/6/2014

PSYCHIATRY - AND THE UNWARRANTED EXTRA COSTS ON THE AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC PURSE

By Frances Harris

The Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Tony Abbot has been railing about the cost of maintaining unemployed people on the Disability Support Pension, and others on unemployment benefits, rising health care cost blowouts, and supplement benefits. There is a solution to decrease these expenditures.

There are huge amounts of wasted money which are hidden and rarely talked about. Just beneath the surface of budget deficits in health and welfare are untold stories which are not the fault of the recipients; in fact they are often the unwilling victims.

People with varying degrees of mental illness are being kept out of the work force and using up precious health care resources through no fault of their own, but because of bungled treatments and careless medical guesses by psychiatrists in Australia. When a person with a job is suddenly zonked out for weeks by the prescriptions of a psychiatrist, he or she is unlikely to hold that job for long. There are better ways.

The compounding stresses on both the patient, their family and support network can and does lead to the patient and family breakdown and all being hospitalized repeatedly due to compounding health and stress issues such as caring for the patient, money deficits, carer and family work interruption, that forces the patient on to the Disability Support Pension (DSP.) He or she may start out fit and healthy, but if the brain is compromised by the wrong medication, incomplete diagnostics or dose over a long time, there is nothing the family or patient can do. Follow up government clinics are overwhelmed. Inadequate treatments; and psychiatry’s inability to consider the cost and welfare of all concerned seems to be ignored. Expenditure from the public purse seems limitless.

There is a better way. Neurology should be in the forefront of mental health management, because it has the science to back it up. It’s like the old saying: ‘penny wise, pound foolish.’ If all mental patients were tested by way of pharmacoginetics which measures the individual’s capacity to absorb and tolerate specific medications, more of the mentally ill would be inclined to benefit from a prescription and less likely to finish up in psychiatric care. It costs about $270 for the full test, versus weeks in hospital, in the mental health ward and attendance at follow-up government clinics. Which is better? It’s obvious. If the type and dose of medication is right first time, there should be more people leaving the DSP and working, more carers back in employment, fewer carers looking for carer supplements from the government. Social security outlay and for hospital stays and ER presentations would shrink public outlays considerably. The Australian social fabric will be more secure.

Those who want to work, but suddenly become unable to maintain and existing job, are actually being held back. Now Psychiatry can’t be confused with medical care, because the two bear little resemblance. Medicine is holistic, psychiatry is not.

You may ask my qualifications for this evaluation of this subject: – well I am a carer and advocate for a person with a psychological disability whose life and potential career has been devastated by the actions of psychiatrists in both the public and private systems. He was a healthy, well-educated young man who wanted to continue his employment. He started with a small problem which, due to careless administration of medications over sixteen years has steadily kept him unemployable. A hasty diagnosis by a psychiatrist was made and doggedly held on to, even though there was substantial evidence it was be wrong. Now sixteen years later, we are getting closer to the truth.

Psychiatrists, by law are a highly protected, punitive, secretive, self-regulating breed, and because they have a captive patient base of patients, don’t seem to feel the need to follow due diligence shown by mainstream medicine, nor care. Sloppy practices can be glossed over by a confusion of symptoms and poorly defined diagnoses. Until this time, there has been very little science to prove them wrong.  But now, the cosy little relationship maintained with drug companies and Psychiatrists is being eroded by hard core science that threatens the validity of their postulations and ruminations. But they are pushing hard against it. Their huge power base is now under threat. The patient can now be scripted the best drug for them, rather than the current recommended drug of choice.

But - what about the unfortunate patients and wasted money? Well, to explain that; very powerful cliques of psychiatrists all-but run big public hospitals, especially those with significant psychiatric facilities. I have watched the opinion of a psychiatrist-in-training trump the highly skilled medical opinion of a registrar based on science, at Frankston Hospital, Victoria, Australia, and similar on more than one occasion. There is a considerable and ever growing psychiatric unit there.

On one of these there was ECG evidence of a dangerous heart arrhythmia in a patient who had experienced mental illness which could have been due to dangerous side effects of a psychotropic medication. On the instructions of a psychiatrist the patient was told to leave without any follow up. The patient was my son. A rush to another hospital identified the problem and arranged for follow up. When questioned, Frankston Hospital claimed it followed procedure. No matter what the treating doctor recommends, a psychiatrist has the final say for a patient on the mental health register. You can sense the doctors are privately distressed, but can’t comment. There have been deaths.

My son Edward has been kept on psychotropic drugs for sixteen years with little investigation to find out the cause of his problems. The psychiatrists called it schizophrenia, even though he did not meet the criteria. Once patients are given a diagnosis, they will be forced to be treated that way, sometimes for the rest of their life to do the psychiatrists bidding, even though the treatment may keep that person clamped in a life with serious side effects, psychological confusion, trauma, torment, and unemployment while tearing the patient’s family and support base apart. I call it ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ If you were to take a patient to three independent psychiatrists you would likely get three different diagnoses and treatments.

When Nazi Germany carried out such medical experiments on mental patients and the disabled, there were serious consequences. It is not only legal in Australia, but enforced by law. In Victoria a few repeat presentations at ER can result in a Community Treatment Order, where the patient is ‘zonked out,’ on injections with no say in the process. It’s terrifying, because if there are serious side effects, like coma or delirium, the injection keeps on giving for a fortnight. These patients are in serious peril. In my son’s case there is good evidence he has a sleep disorder which requires different treatment. Now with the advancement of science we are in the process of finding out.

Consideration of the welfare of the mentally ill and disabled are practically non-existent when it comes to psychiatry. There is no-one in authority there for then. There are shell procedures of appeal which are tilted. There have been many serious errors and people are now turning away from psychiatry and heading to neurology which has a specialist scientific base.

So as long as that protected species called the psychiatrist is allowed to run rampant with the public purse, under the protective cloak of vested interests, for example the current recommended drug of choice; incentivised hospital preferred drugs, things will never change. But I do ask Mr Abbot to not blame the victim, but take a closer look at what is going on right under his nose.  

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS (Updated 15/5/2014)

WHO ARE WE NOW?

Australian politics - reading between the lines.

By Frances Harris

The Abbot government has just made a powerful statement in the budget 2014, about how they regard their Australian citizens, and importantly how they expect us to feel about each other.

Now for all you mothers and fathers who decided to live a low income lifestyle due to your own poor career choices in life, don’t blame the government when you can’t take all of your flu ridden family to the doctor at once because of the seven dollar co-payment, and if you can’t return for the results of the diagnostic tests and medication, it’s simple. Just pick out the one who looks the sickest, maybe that looks like has pneumonia, excluding the parents of course, and deal with them one at a time. All it takes is some forward planning.

That, we are told is fiscally responsible, and if it happens the disease is undiagnosed ‘bird flu,’ or some rare biology contracted from a rich person who’s returned from overseas, just suck it up. You are doing this for the Liberal Party, your country and the economic bottom line. I wonder how Europe coped with the black plague or even the bubonic plague, in the eighteen hundreds. Maybe we can take some guidance from what they did. There are lots of old graves in the local cemetery that show how Australia managed the crisis. I hope there is planning in this budget for the endless possibilities. Maybe the new super research centre can find cures, in six or seven years’ time. We can learn a lot from history.

Now with the expectation that the cost of getting a degree at Australian Universities is likely to triple:  - the age of entitlement for the rich has arrived, again. Finally our government has gotten rid of all those poor people who are taking away opportunities from the rich, because they won’t be able to pay back their HEX debt in one lifetime. The way is free for anyone with money to become a professional student; perhaps a parking spot for the errant young adult, if you will. That is not to make less of the smart wealthy students who deserve their place on the high stage. They should be applauded for their abilities.

What about the war torn and abandoned people oversees, some without food, medicine or shoes on their feet; who are in their plight through no fault of their own? The government indicates; they can wait. We need to withdraw some of their allocated budget for the paid parental scheme. Both are worthy causes, and one can realise it is a statement about Australia’s place in the world and what we think about the weak and vulnerable everywhere. We have an image to keep. The apparent message from the government is: We aren’t prepared to take care of our own weak and vulnerable shown in the new budget cuts, so why should we pay for those in other countries? Life is about standing on your own two feet, sometimes without shoes and a matching handbag.

Now that there are plans to slash staff at the Tax department, I guess the retrenched staff won’t be transferred a bolstered Investigation unit that tracks oversees money transferred to Monaco or the Swiss occasional bank account. Six months will be good for the character, make them stronger.

And if it is you who happen to have a child who is struggling to keep up at school and you don’t own a king’s ransom for tutors and the like – just get used to it. This is good for all of us and good for the country – right? We don’t want to be breeding a race of future dole bludging welfare recipients.

So for the poor and needy in Australia, if we see you out on the street with the begging bowl, because they are unable to keep a roof over their heads, or put food on the table, we who have more have been encouraged shut one eye as we pass you by and remember, it’s because this is good for Australia. - We all have to share the pain equally.

POLITICS AUSTRALIAN STYLE (Updated 14/5/2014)

POLITICS AUSTRALIAN STYLE

Politics With a difference

by Frances Harris

So Australians are still recovering from the effects of the pre-budget launch, lunch, liver failure or however they decided to treat it. Now the mushroom cloud is clearing, we are all looking around to reassess what is left after the fallout. It all depends on your status in life, whether you recognise blue skies or a blizzard. If you are a super mega-rich mining mogul, with assets and bank accounts that swing through the Cayman Islands, you will likely be planning your next luxurious holiday to somewhere on a big boat.

But if you are a middle class parent of three children on $100,001 you will be pouring over the calculator with three or more empty coffee cups squeezing your writing space. You’ll be deleting items like the Christmas holiday at Eildon Weir in central Victoria, for the next three years, to cover future increasing school fees for your children.  But if you happened to be the man next door who is on $100,002, with three teenagers, who like to sleep in and don’t have a fast paced career in their sites, you will be freaking out. A six months wait to get the dole, and a six month payment before it cuts out, you will whimpering; goodbye comfortable retirement, goodbye middle class life. I suppose cabbage gruel doesn’t taste all that bad, if you don’t think about it too much! Does it? My plans to start a small coffee house, or a boat hire business by the sea when I retire I will have to be put off till the next life.

And if you are a young childless couple with two middle range jobs; you will be thinking, I wonder how long we can freeze sperm cells and eggs? Will they still be fresh in our forties? Then we should be able to put a deposit on a three bedroom house fifty kilometres from out jobs in the city? Petrol? I wonder if you can dilute it with ethanol without blowing up the car. Which would be the cheaper?

But, if you are a pensioner, your shaking hands will be pouring over the shrinking bank statements and replacing them with the overdrawn statements from the bankcard. - I wonder if we could secretly raise a goose in our shed and put it in the freezer without the neighbors catching on. Oh, and I suppose we can live in the front two rooms of our family house, where the electricity is still functioning. Just hope there aren't exposed wires back there that could come in contact with the leaky water pipes. I suppose mold doesn’t smell that bad after a while.

Then if you are someone with a physical, intellectual our mental disability, you will be drawing the bedclothes over your head and stay in bed all day. There’s no point coming out of the bedroom if there isn’’t any food in the fridge or gas or electricity to cook it. Or if you do have food, sleeping out under the stars can be a good experience if you live in Fiji. If you don’t have generous, wealthy parents, then hunger and debt collectors will be your permanent best friends, unless you want to start a crime franchise to avoid despair.

Now these are many of the options. It’s not hard to work out who fares the best from the Abbott Government budget. I don’t like to call it the Abbott budget, because the Prime Minister likely had little say in it anyway. His job is to sell it and deflect any punches that come the government’s way.

So there you have it. Goodbye to family time, family holidays and one job; social cohesion, consumer spending, a normal retirement and balmy Bali nights. Hello a couple of nights in a caravan at Ballarat on the way to inspect the retired insane asylum at Ararat, before throwing a line into the Avoca River to catch dinner. Oh, regression, I remember the days that was a normal way to live. Just take care to teach the kids to avoid the pointy end of the fish hook, and if you want to dinner to reach the pan, that fish are slippery.

Have a good week

POLITICS AUSTRALIAN STYLE - Update 10/5/2014

THEY CALL IT AUSTRALIAN POLITICS

By Frances Harris

Fiscal responsibility; or is it a wrecking ball?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of politics in Australia. On top of that I have been searching for a regular pet name for the standing parties and independent candidates. It will come to me in time. With the latest budget announcement by the Abbot Government I decided to call them: The Lemming Party, you know those weird little animals that swim out to sea in a group and drown for no apparent reason. When one goes, the rest follow. 

The reason I am concentrating on the liberals is because they are in power, not because I hate them. Some of them are as cute as a teddy bear; take Joe Hockey for instance.

The Liberal Party had the election in the bag, until the budget bulletins started to surface. The show continues: - liberals are rising out of the bog again; and when they to shake it off, everyone gets covered in mud. To make fair comment, the Labour Party has a just as interesting routine: They are completely submerged in the bog due to their ‘pink bats home installation,’ fiasco and a long list of other notable misadventures, and I don’t expect them to re-emerge any time soon. 

It’s always - bog in, bog out in Australian politics. Then there is the Palmer United that hasnt yet had its chance to sink, or shine – see what happens? There is real potential brewing.

Let me recap in a nutshell, the liberal philosophy. It’s, take from the lazy, welfare dependent nonworking poor, and shift the savings to hard working high rollers and mining magnates etc. who may, if they are given enough fiscal incentive; not send the jobs offshore and invest in Australia. ‘The Trickle Down, effect’: that failed in America so spectacularly and kept the Democrats in power for the last two terms, has spectacularly failed here too. To dd: The Labour policy here has been - give, -give,-give, borrow, borrow, borrow, and that is not a sustainable policy either. So what’s the alternative? Perhaps the up and coming Palmer United Party, which is yet to show its true colors and its capacity to go, ‘bog diving or not.’ There’s plenty of time.

Now getting back to the lemmings:  Liberals don’t realize that every time they come in with the Razor Gang, slashing and burning, leaving streams of shattered lives in their wake, they disassemble the lives of their own middle class liberal voters, and when they and their families fall below the acceptable poverty line, they transform into committed Labour or independent voters for a generation or more. Remember Work Choices? Self-destruction is theirs for the taking.

The libs forget those families have children who grow up, and at the most vulnerable times go through the meat grinder of fiscal restraint. Do you think they will forget in a hurry? - Perhaps not. The new families they make; may never get to be middle class like their parents and resent it. So it’s ‘Bye, Bye,’ to emerging potential future liberal voters. The most likely thing that will bring those voters back to the libs for a while is when Labour sinks back into the bog and smells so bad nobody wants to be near them. - Bog out, bog in, that’s how politics in Australia rotates.

Now to tackle the 35,000 or so young people who are on the disability support pension the Abbot Government want reassessed for work ready readiness. It’s obvious not many in the Abbot government take responsibility for a person with an intellectual or mental health disability, or maybe taken the time to investigate. They can't be because most of them are poor because they can't work due to their carer responsibilities. We will talk another time about cuts to the carer allowance. So not only is this quest likely to ruin the lives of vulnerable people who look alright on the day, and talk like normal people most of the time, there is no foreseeable prospect of them being able to support themselves, or reconstruct their lives once the rug is pulled from under them.

There is an anti-psychotic medication called F......., commonly used on people with mental illness for instance. I blurred the name because I want to avoid expensive litigation. There are many more medications (heavy acting drugs), but this is one example. It can fuzz the brain till the patient can’t pick up a tissue to blow their nose for extended periods of time, meaning the person in work will lose the long-awaited or cherished job, and unemployment benefits are not enough to live on, so they feel they have no other option but to ditch the pills and take their chances.  

It won’t be long before they will find themselves in the police, ‘paddy wagon,’ on their way for an extended stay in a public hospital. Few can afford private health cover, unless they have wealthy parents. 

That ill person at the most vulnerable time, will likely be out on the street shortly after hospital, hungry, unsupervised, and at risk of harm and remission. So what would the authorities do if a vulnerable animal was released instead, cold and hungry onto the street? The responsible party would be in front of a magistrate in the blink of an eye, with a fine and possibly jail time. But what if the animal was a stray, unowned and uncared for? I rest my case. People are lesser creatures and under successive governments; are left to perish to neglect, accident or suicide! because it requires more money to support them. Can you imagine the fear, loneliness and devastation that person has to endure? Not to mention the family that has no conceivable hope of dealing with it. This is the real world, not a fairy tale.

Most of the time families are not be able to pick up the pieces, so who does it then? Are our most vulnerable to be treated worse than the asylum seekers who have at least got a tent and food? They will already be too compromised to help themselves. Sure, if the payment recipient of the disability support payment presents to the independent government sanctioned doctor, on a good day, the Disability Support Pension will be revoked. So then, the Libs' will have to invest heavily in welfare safety nets like subsidized housing, more rental assistance, more unemployment benefits, hospital ER’s, additional mental health clinics, extra policing and new mental health mental hospital wings when the mentally ill or compromised people ditch their pills in favor of keeping the part time job they might already have. 

Often they leave hospital worse off than they went in, so it’s a revolving door. So many go through while there are ever reducing resources from health cuts, the treatment is not properly evaluated, or followed up. Have you seen the cost of Psychiatrists and other resources? More wasted money.

I estimate it will cost the new Abbott government squillions of dollars to fix the fallout, or, there is the other option to build more jails, including more policing to catch the criminals who steal food to survive and take it back under the bridge where they are forced to live, and be visited by the extra mental health staff hired because of the budget cuts to welfare. Then, perhaps there is the co-payment to be found for the doctor when they get a chest infection. It doesn’t make sense to me.

Have a good day.

THE AUSTRALIAN BUDGET

By Frances Harris

There’s a fine line between pleasure and pain. Consumer confidence is waxing and waning, the markets are soft; they’re on the rise, and they are taking a hammering in between languishing and flat lining. If you think it, Australia’s economy is doing it, hourly. According to our beloved Prime Minister Australian’s will be better off from this budget. I like our P.M but wouldn't vote for him, or the opposition. For what it is worth, I like to support anyone who isn't entrenched. That way I am free to poke fun at each of the major parties. I’m really looking out for a candidate with imagination, drive and a fresh approach to come along. Humphrey B. Bear isn’t available just now, so I’ll have to be patient.

As always, whenever we have a change of government ….they are taking the axe to the poor old Public Service again to eliminate waste caused by the previous government largess. So let’s talk about tax, the Prime minister’s favorite subject he doesn’t like to talk about.  We are a service based economy and we no longer have a goods based economy, with a burgeoning welfare dependent population who pay no tax. So what does he plan to do about it?

Slice and dice the old age pension of course. That way the oldies won’t be able to maintain their dwellings, then drive rickety, un-serviced cars, have more accidents and need more government help. They will have to lean heavily on their kids for support, which puts pressure on their marriages, increases the divorce rate, which will often put one parent and the kids, and sometimes the dad on welfare dependency for years to come. Five for the price of one. Then, the government will have to grow the Child Support Agency at Centrelink which will be expanding fast while other agencies are shrinking. Shuffle the sacked public service officers from the Tax Department to welfare. - Easy. 

So what do we do with the grandma’s and Grandpas whose houses have fallen down from neglect and they can’t live there any more: – give them rent assistance and subsidized housing of course. That is if they can find a place to live with most low income rental properties already taken and a waiting list as long as your arm.  There will have to be more dwellings built to cater for demand. Hospitals and Mental Health Agencies will balloon with sicker older Australians and their children and grandchildren who can’t cope with the new fiscal philosophy.

The children won’t cope at school and drop out early, maybe finding crime as their first best option to earn a living. They will raise new generation criminals who are heavily welfare dependent ad infinitum, ad nausea. Crime and psychology agencies will be greatly in demand and tax money will need to pour in as anxious criminals and victims of crime raise their voices looking for help. Insurance Company stocks will wilt on the stock exchanges from the weight of claims and well - healed investors may likely loose retirement savings and need to claim welfare when they retire.

A fuel tax amounting to another three cents per litre on the already thirty eight cent already being taxed will rout motorists and businesses. Its easy maths, consumers and businesses will buy less, earnings will be down and the economy will start to deflate. Small business margins and family budgets are paper thin right now so parents will have to cut childhood activities, and businesses from goods and services to make up for the extra tax.

On the upside, is said to be a heavy reduction in Sovereign debt and outstanding interest. So do we stimulate, or detonate the economy? Maybe it’s written in the stars.

BLACKBIRDING, THE CAUSE FOR AN APOLOGY.

BLACKBIRDING

Looking at Australia’s dark past.

By Frances Harris



 

In the wake of the Australian Government apology to the country’s indigenous Australians, South Sea Islanders and some mainstream Australians have called on the government to do the same for the South Sea Islanders who were brought under duress to Australia to work on plantations in the late 19^th Century. Since many of them could not understand the English language, there was wide latitude for deception and exploitation when enticing the islanders onto ships bound for Australia’s work sites. Many of them would fall victim to the black birding trade, some deceived with gifts and trinkets, some brought on board ships through their natural curiosity, then forcibly retained on ships that set sail taking them from the Islanders villages. When Islanders paddled their canoes and boats out to meet incoming vessels, crew would in some cases sink their boats and drag the occupants on board, in their haste to meet quotas.

The pearl diving trade followed in the footsteps of the plantation owners, taking Pacific Islanders and indigenous populations from desert areas in the Northern of Queensland and locally to harvest pearls under dangerous and arduous conditions. Because of poor and unsanitary living and workplace conditions added to long hard hours of work, in both industries many of them died.

For over 40 years, starting from the mid - 19^th Century, to the early 20^th Century, indigenous Pacific Islander workers were gathered up using these questionable recruitment practices, to work in the cane fields of Queensland and other sites. They came from places like Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and the Loyalty Islands of New Caledonia and Niue. Some say 62,000 South Sea Islanders were put on ships to Australia, a percentage died on the way due to maltreatment and others from unsanitary conditions on board, although the true tally will never be known.

The British and Queensland Governments attempted unsuccessfully to regulate the trade and assigned military vessels to check the conditions and the numbers of Pacific islanders on board the loaded transport ships. The problem with military oversight was that ships carrying more than their quota of Islanders, would throw them overboard to reduce numbers to required levels when approached. Legislated required that Melanesian labourers were to be recruited for three years, paid three hundred pounds per year, issued basic clothing and given access to the company store for supplies. This was wishful thinking on the part of Governments because employers knew many ways to circumvent the system.

With Federation and the introduction of the Pacific Islanders Labourers Act 1901, and the White Australian Policy, reluctantly Queensland joined the rest of the colonies by repatriating the majority of black birded labourers from Australia. Deportation was carried out from 1901 to 1906, leaving behind a settled population of Pacific Islanders in Queensland coastal towns. A significant number, in the vicinity of 4.500 upwards, had settled in Bundaberg near the cane fields. 2013 has marked 150 years since the beginning of black birding in the Queensland sugar industry. Islanders were brought from the Pacific Islands to the Burnett River in Bundaberg to be sold there in the slave trade market. Very few Australians to this day realise we have had an active slave trade in the country.

Currently many Pacific Islander communities have formed organised groups that are actively seeking to uncover the stories of their lost family members. They are also searching for any lineages of descendants of those who never returned home.

The fact that an apology was given to the stolen generations of indigenous Australians, providing emotional relief for them and their families, it does not seem unreasonable the Australian Government should also apologise to Pacific Islanders for coerced slavery. They are not looking for monetary compensation, but suggestions have been made that Australia’s restrictions on employment opportunities for existing Islanders should be relaxed. No decision has been made to date.