Our mental health system is broken

Lisbeth Latham

Yesterday, I arrived home from a month in hospital. Today, I opened an invoice from Ambulance Victoria for ~$1200 for the cost of transporting me from my home to a public hospital, where they tried to discharge me, because “they didn’t think it was in my interest to be hospitalised”, “they didn’t know what was in my interest, but hospitalisation wasn’t”. It had been my fifth trip to an Emergency Department this year, the previous four, including the one the day prior had been “unsuccessful” despite telling the nurse, “if you send me home I will kill myself”, however this visit, unlike the previous four, was “involuntary” as when I rang the mental health triage and was told “you refused assistance yesterday”, I hung up saying “I will just kill myself then”. So, they called the police and an ambulance was sent because while me saying “I’m really scared I will hurt myself and need help” failed to elicit the support I was seeking, the hanging up provoked a response, of two police cars and an ambulance.

The $1200 was a shock, I don’t have to pay it, my insurer will, but if I wasn’t insured or wasn’t a member of Ambulance Victoria, I would have been hit with a $1200 invoice because the system failed me when I asked politely, and only responded when I escalated.

To add insult to injury, once I was admitted to hospital, I was told very quickly that there was nothing they could do for me because the public system is not equipped to deal with people with borderline. I would need to go private if I wanted assistance that would help me. Which was something I was able to do, at a cost of ~$16, 000 to my insurer, but millions of people in Australia do not have that option. Our system is broken, it fails people who desperately need help and just rejects them and adds insult to injury.

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