Australia’s Mental Health Care System Is a Product of Austerity
It’s not just that Australia’s mental health care system is underfunded. Austerity has bolstered reliance on quick, cost-cutting treatments like medication and cognitive behavioral therapy at the expense of long-term, socially oriented approaches.
In a robust enough mental health care system, people should have access to a variety of models of care. (Lucy Lambriex / Getty Images)
The mental health care system in Australia is under a huge degree of stress. Recent austerity measures — such as the halving of Medicare-subsidized mental health care sessions — have worsened an already bad situation, itself the product of years of underfunding. However, to only focus on funding shortfalls is to miss some of deeper harms that neoliberalism has inflicted in the mental health care system and the people it supports.
Market-logic and the prioritization of cost-effectiveness over effectiveness itself has led to the dominance of the medical model of mental health. According to the medical model, mental distress can be diagnosed according to neatly categorizable illnesses that have largely biological origins. Treatment emphasizes individual responsibility, and is geared toward efficiency: medication and short-term therapies manage the worst of someone’s symptoms before they can be discharged.
The medical model tends to ignore social, economic, and political factors that underlie suffering. Its dominance in clinical practice and scientific research has actively marginalized other models of psychology that emphasize the interconnections between people and their material worlds.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.