Are you OK, Australia? I’m not. I’m far from it. And neither are the millions of Australians struggling with mental health and other wicked life issues daily.
You see, Australia, we have a problem. A big one. And I am afraid any patronising insincere R U OK? Ain’t going to fix it!
Putting aside that, I think you are probably a selfish arsehole who needs a good shake if you need to be reminded, encouraged and trained or tools to ask someone if they are OK for a moment.
Our mental health, support, and early invention system are in shambles, desperately needing reform. Successive Government keeps pouring money into it, but it’s not fixing the underlying issues. Why? Because there’s no political will to acknowledge or address them.
Systemic problems like lack of funding, sub-standard service delivery, lack of citizen empowerment, and inadequate and appropriate access continue to plague us and only worsen.
The “Are you OK?” campaign is a well-intentioned awareness campaign but ultimately is an inadequate yet expensive response to the mental health crisis in Australia. Undoubtedly, it is a success in getting people to reflect and talk, but is it making a tangible difference for those it needs most? Sorry, I am not convinced.
We need to highlight the underlying causes of mental illness instead of focusing on symptoms or believing that shallow middle-class do-gooding and band-aid solutions can address them.
We are suffering from a lack of truth-telling and are not generating the political will that lives beyond the once-a-year R U OK day. The bandwagon bigrade made up of the often shallowly motivated T-shirt-wearing, corporate selfie, and slogan-sharing isn’t cutting it.
The underlying causes of mental illness – such as poverty, homeless, social isolation, sub-standard public housing, Family violence, inequality and over-medicating responses, and shitty human services interventions– are not being addressed because they are challenging to solve. Highlighting the challenges, complexities and system failures does not make for a good election platform or career-making fodder; thus, the system is locked in this endless cycle of dysfunction and reviews.
As long as these underlying causes are ignored, the mental health crisis will continue unabated. You can not leave people to live in conditions that most people would not last a day in and then say, R U, OK? No? Well, here, take a pill. Take care now
Some of the challenges in the sector
The illusive idea is that if we are aware of a problem, then the problem will be addressed. It is often used as a justification for inaction, especially regarding social issues. This is because addressing social problems requires taking responsibility, systemic change, proactive action and change in thinking, which is difficult and often politically unpopular.
Someone says we need to be Evidence Driven every second work meeting I attend. It sounds great, but at best, and In reality, it fancy well-presented words in a report that tells us what we already know.
At worst, it is rehashed, recycled, rebranded bull shit, not backed by objective evidence. Instead, it relies on assumptions and generalisations by academics who have no grounding in the dark realities and complexities people are struggling with.
This Evdiecne-driven bigrade is problematic, as it can lead to people inadvertently ignoring or dismissing genuine lived and local experience and knowledge. Don’t believe me? Do you remember when Evidence told us depression was caused by chemical imbalance..? looks like the latest Evidence suggests we might have gotten that wrong.
I am not against research or Evidence, and the point is that using arguments about Evidence-based practice and sold evaluation frameworks to delay or drag out proactive action or discredit local-driven ideas is insulting and dumb and often wastes much energy for little return.
Our ‘Business as Usual’ support systems and awareness interventions are not working, and our governments and NGO sector defence, which comes from our individual and collective ego, means we fail to acknowledge the problems in our approaches, nor do we unpack them and address them.
Anyone with eyes in their head and a real connection to the community can see where the fault lines are, yet our class-based blindness and denial remain supreme.
The Funder’s love affair with big charities and poverty porn, whose only efficiency is making life easier for ticking box grant officers and making politicians look good, needs to end. This ever-growing belief and love for big charities come at the cost of local empowerment, local connection, self-determination, and locally led and owned quality intervention.
As long as politicians and bureaucrats continue to bury their heads in the sand and fail to properly resource and equip local social supports and local solutions that help keep people well, the problem will continue. It will continue if we keep falling for the spin and feel-good awareness-raising days, no matter the good intention.
Wasting resources on interventions that aren’t helping but are political sexy and acceptable while neglecting those that would make a real difference is at shocking levels if we only cared to look. Spending $40k a day in distributing food relief in one outlet, or millions on an R you OK campaign or locking or spending $713 940 a year in detaining one child is ludicrous and insane!
I’ll finish by saying spending a day in a trauma-informed course that does not make you trauma-informed! You are delusional if you think otherwise; however, that is another blog.
I could go on, but I won’t; needless to say, as someone who has spent decades in the community sector in meetings that are about meetings and debates about debates and seen more awareness days than I have had hot dinners, It’s frustrating, and it’s time for a change.
We don’t need awareness. We need absolute honesty, actual reflective practice and immediate action!
We need an accessible, responsible, empowering, citizen-driven, holistic support system with interventions that work rather than make matters worse.
So are you OK, Australia? I hope so. But this cynic is not holding his breath.
Feel free to share your thoughts or counterpoints below.
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