If I Could Change One Thing About Australia It Would Be: The Mental Health System

In association with Australian of the Year, we’ve asked five influential and accomplished Australians to share an idea for change they’re passionate about.

First up is Chris Raine, founder and CEO of Hello Sunday Morning — a movement dedicated towards a better drinking culture by supporting people who want to change their relationship with alcohol. Right now, more than 49,500 people have used the organisation’s social platform to document their experiences in reducing or eliminating their alcohol consumption. 

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I think the best thing we could do for Australia is invest in a really great mental health system. We need a system with a strong community and infrastructure that enables businesses to create technologies that support people to improve the way they think.

The statistics are pretty crazy: suicide is the leading cause of death for Australians aged between 15 and 44, with almost seven deaths per day. The sheer number of people who go through depression or anxiety in Australia — particularly in their younger years — is just massive: one in six people will experience depression in their lives, and one in four will experience anxiety. I think that improving the system so that people can better manage their mental health, especially those who haven’t got the support to do that already, would resolve a massive inequity. This is something we can fix with the right technology.

For example, in any given year around 15 percent of Australians will take one or more medications for mental health issues. But these medications are just not handled well. You go to see your GP and you get prescribed some drugs, often on a trial-and-error basis: “Try this, see how you go, and if you don’t feel better, come back.” Sometimes the patient comes back, sometimes they don’t. From a pharmacological point of view, we should be developing technology that helps people see whether they are actually doing better, objectively, rather than the purely subjective measure of how they’re feeling, based on answers to a few questions when you go to see your GP.

More than that, I think our healthcare system prioritises looking after physical health over the process of seeing a psychologist, or someone else with a mental health background or skills. At the moment, the Australian Government only spends 8 percent of its healthcare budget on mental health issues, while on average other OECD countries spend between 12 – 16 percent. There’s an inequity there, and the funding should be shifted to something more effective. The World Health Organisation often references a phrase I love: “there is no health without mental health”. You can have a healthy body, you can be exercising regularly, but if you get depression you could have a low quality of life or even kill yourself. In Australia we have largely taken care of a lot of the fundamental issues such as access to food, water, and shelter — for many, many people, if not everyone. So we need to focus on supporting people to think better and try to manage the kind of problems that we can all face.

I personally go through bouts of depression in my life, and I’m incredibly lucky in that I have two parents who are GPs and a wide network of doctors and psychologists I can get support from. Even then, I feel quite frustrated sometimes, because the system you need to navigate to get treatment for a mental health challenge or problem is really obscure. I’m not the smartest person alive, but I do have a masters degree, and trying to book a psychologist’s appointment is one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do! That I have to spend time trying to find someone to have an appointment with in the next two weeks, plus pay another $100 or $150 on top of the Mental Health Treatment Plan covered by Medicare, just to get help — it’s an atrocity. And that’s just for me: someone who comes from a middle-class family, with issues that could be dealt with quite quickly with the right skills and strategies. But the process is so obscure, underfunded, under-resourced, and inefficient.

What I’d love to see, and hopefully create, is technology that makes that process much faster and more efficient than the one I’ve had to go through to seek help. It’s amazing that we have apps like Uber where you can get your phone out, see the drivers in your area, and get a ride immediately. It should be the same for mental health: you should be able to get your phone out and see what help is available immediately in your local area, whether that’s talking therapies, other kinds of therapy, group support, or whatever. That immediacy is so important, because we need to alleviate the suffering that can come with mental illness very quickly.

Aside from my own experiences with depression, I’m passionate about this idea for change based on the work I’ve done with Hello Sunday Morning. I believe that the excessive nature of our consumption of drugs, including alcohol, comes from a place of self-medicating: either insecurities, or past pain, or anxiety. Alcohol is often used in that way. Many of the people who do our program online are dealing with issues — you take the alcohol out of your life, and you have to deal with this marvellous personality that you’ve always been trying to avoid. That’s the therapy that comes with having a break from drinking and doing Hello Sunday Morning.

It’s often not easy to do this, and sometimes quite a scary proposition for people. But I think the fact we don’t encourage that process is a failing of society — instead we hide behind another identity or self-medicate rather than get the right medication or help to work through the problems we face. In the future, we at Hello Sunday Morning want to do an even better job of helping people when they want to come off the alcohol and find healthier ways of dealing with life and the experiences we all seem to go through.

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Do you know someone whose ideas for change have made Australia a better place? Want their hard work to be supported and recognised? Nominations for the Australian of the Year 2016 Awards are now open. Head to the Australian of the Year site to submit a nomination before August 3.

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Chris Raine is the founder and CEO of Hello Sunday Morning. He is the recipient of a Skoll Scholarship to Oxford University and is the Queensland Young Australian of the Year 2012.

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If you suffer from depression or other mental health issues, you can reach Lifeline 24 hours a day on 13 11 14, the Suicide Call Back Service 24 hours a day on 1300 659 467, and Headspace on 1800 650 890.