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Reports: Schizphrenia Fellowship NSW- Symposium 20 May 2006

Report by Margaret Ratcliffe, Carer

The Schizophrenia Fellowship yearly Symposium held on Saturday 20 May at the Masonic Centre in Sydney was well attended. Judge Frank Walker opened the conference with a wide ranging report on the progress achieved to date. He said Schizophrenia Fellowship was started twenty years ago by a group of angry parents and has done much to improve outcomes for consumers and carers through advocacy.

Prime Minister John Howard has announced that $1.8 billion will be spent on mental health. The Mental Health Council of 44 persons of diverse expertise will decide how the money will be spent. This is the important part, because it is easy for politicians to throw money at a problem area, but unless the money is channelled into community based services, many problems will not be addressed.

The Richmond report recommended the de-institutionalising of consumers by closing asylums and transferring care to general hospital psychiatric beds. Unfortunately, the follow-up community based care was never properly followed through. This has led to patients being discharged into the community with too little support leading to homelessness, gaols being full of people without proper treatment, and not enough rehabilitation.

Senator Lyn Allison went to Trieste, Italy, where she observed a very successful community based mental health centre headed by a Psychiatrist, psychologists, social workers, and psychiatric nurses. The centre had 8 beds for overnight stays.

In Trieste, 400 consumers are employed on award wages in social co-operatives operating businesses including restaurants, horticulture, gardening, the arts, museums and hotels, and 30% of these people are affected by Psychosis. In Italy, 94% of the mental health budget is spent on community based services, the balance is on acute hospital beds.

The Keynote Speaker was Major Sam Cochran, a leading US expert on police and mental health partnerships, crisis intervention and hostage negotiation. He headed up a new initiative in America to stop violence in apprehending mentally ill persons. A quarter of the police force are selected as suitable caring persons to train as leaders in negotiating a calm result with no violence needed in these call out situations. The leader of a call out team is trained to look at an angry client with a listening, sympathetic stance and wait until they have finished before calmly suggesting that the matter should be discussed at the police station. There have been no more shooting incidents by police reacting too quickly, and much lower number of people being taken to gaol. Rehabilitation services follow up the good work.

I would like to congratulate Pam Bruce and the other organisers for a very successful Symposium and recommend it to all consumers and carers to attend next year.

Editor's Note: We await with great interest further developments following the Memphis Police initiative that could see similar positive and building strategies being employed in Australia.