Mi Files

HEADSPACE has got me thinking. For those still learning the many acronyms, superlatives and Facebook group names, Headspace is a government funded mental health organisation with upbeat well staffed centres popping up all over the place like mushrooms in a boggy paddock. Let me just say that like well chosen mushrooms, Headspace is brilliant - lots of funding for exciting contemporary projects, consumer conferences and street crew advocacy. But also like picking wild fungi, Headspace comes with a health warning. It's just for youth.

Youth these days, is now classified (in the broadest funding sense of the term) as anyone between the ages of 12 and 25. It doesn't unfortunately include kidults or chubby men in fast cars. Yet if there's one sure way to know you're falling out of youthness, that's to wonder if you'll ever grasp the last dregs of jeans fashion in Jeans West or any associated hair cut mojo. Another signpost, which is colder and much more doof, is realising you're not considered young enough to qualify for funky mental health funding to keep you well.

If there's one word I'm starting to despise more than any in the system of mental health, it's the word 'youth'. Listening to SBS Insight the other night with a pile of MH experts, the one word that accompanied pretty much everything that Mr McGorry and 90% of the panel said, it was that obligatory political word. I'm quite Ok and even slightly smug about the fact that I've grown out of bubble gum fashion, I'm not Ok about being grown out of a chance to live my life at the fullest. Having someone in government care enough about me to bother with that.

I'm not a 'qualified' shrink but someone has told me that mental illness often hits guys in their late teens and women in their early twenties, true. However, some people only become mentally unwell after they've had a baby, some people discover that their life long obsession for buying and selling nice cars and houses is finished off with a portfolio of suicidal depression.

Other folk find out that going through divorce has given them a nasty case of agoraphobia, others find that washing their hands 50 times an hour in the office bathroom still doesn't make them feel clean. Ever walked into your local hotel at lunch time and been blinded by the jingle-jangle of the pokies? You'll probably walk out after losing your $20, some people just can't. I'm sure coming home from having a gun pointed in your face a few times would give you reason to jump sky high in the middle of the night screaming too.

It seems to me, that there are two types of mental health programs in Australia now. One is the Headspace approach - lots of exciting and engaging ideas, to reach people 'before' they get sick for life (also read that as 'over 25') the other is with a capital Mental Health Outcome approach - static rehab services that offer group therapy 'after' people have been unwell for life.

Early Intervention is the way to slash mental health funding in the future, I totally agree with it. But the government MUST also listen to the voices from the majority of people actually living every single day with mental illness, because there's also two campaigns going on within the Mental Health system. One is for more funding for services, programs and therapies represented by staff and carers. Nice.

But the second and almost completely silent campaign, is the one by people living with MI - we don't yearn for more rehab therapy services, beds in hospitals or more staff at drop-in. What we're after is a whole society attitude shift, that reaches EVERY SINGLE CORNER of the community - MH services included. Living with MI requires a 24 hour, 7 day a week effort to integrate and support people with a MI in the community, not just throwing money at services treating the extremely sick person or the young person.

If I really got going here, I'd also be asking for some sort of national apology to all people who've ever been in a public mental health hospital ward pre-21st century. That in itself is a massive aberration of human rights. Hopefully no young person will EVER have to go through what a great majority of us over '25's have been through in those circumstances. The truth swept under the historical carpet (for now).

So, the challenge here now is to somehow reinstate the intrinsic value of the every generation of people with a mental illness. When I think of the way countries are steadily learning to respect their original peoples I imagine a time when our government recognises and learns to shape the future of our children's happiness from listening to the depth of wisdom and meaning in our stories.

Youth thinks it knows everything, but age has done it.

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