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How's the social media ban even going to work? And, it's been a bad month for suicide prevention

How's the social media ban even going to work? And, it's been a bad month for suicide prevention
Photo by Gaspar Uhas / Unsplash

Australia's "world-first" social media ban for teens is due to start toward the end of the year and, while it's hugely popular, critics argue the bill is vague and will be difficult to enforce. This great article in Crikey (that's helpfully unpaywalled) takes you through some frequently asked questions, getting you up to speed on what we know so far and what's still left to be thrashed out.

In other news, funding for the Suicide Prevention Research Fund has come to an end, amid critiques that Australia's mental health system is not fit for purpose.

Launched in 2016, the fund was not established as an ongoing project. Nevertheless, the industry peak body who administered it, Suicide Prevention Australia, had been lobbying for its continuation.

Meanwhile, the Productivity Commission concluded that our mental health and suicide prevention services were too under-resourced to meet the needs of the country.

Separately, researchers analysed the funding of non-hospital mental health services and found that spending just $7 more per person could prevent 300 suicides per year. They called for more investment in the mental health workforce to lure and keep psychologists, psychiatrists and GPs with a special interest in underserved areas. These in-need areas should also get more funding in general, as well as better access to digital mental health services.

Daniela McCann, director of the Australian Association of Psychologists (AAPi), said the government needed to work better with psychologists to address the needs of people in regional areas, echoing the proposals above, and calling for funds to relocate psychologists to regional communities, rural placement programs and pathways, better supervision and development to those in the regions and a higher rebate for people working regionally and remotely.

While the federal government commits more than $200 million to build or upgrade Medicare Mental Health Centres (MMHCs), some are asking whether these are basically headspace services for adults, and whether they will wind up missing the neediest, in favour of people with less complex needs.

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You May Like This is written by Ruby Prosser Scully.

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