Legal aid
A multi-million dollar five-year Monash University research project aims to make Australia a world leader in legal protection and entitlements for people with mental illness.
Professor Bernadette McSherry
Multiple studies across Australia over the past two decades have found that a lack of access to proper treatment for individuals with mental illness has led to serious problems, including self-harm, substance abuse, homelessness and family breakdown. A high proportion of people in prison have suffer from psychotic, depressive or anxiety disorders.
Improving mental health services is an obvious remedy for these problems -- but the development of laws that ensure services can be effectively accessed by those in need is also critical, according to Monash University Law Professor Bernadette McSherry.
"Laws alone do not lead to the development of new services, but efforts to improve services will work only if there are appropriate laws in existence shaping the way in which those with mental illness can access the highest attainable standard of care," Professor McSherry said.
"The law governs how hospitals, community services, service providers and other aspects of the mental health system operate and coordinate to set up avenues for individuals with mental illnesses to get the treatment they need."
The Australian Research Council has awarded Professor McSherry a prestigious Federation Fellowship worth more than $2 million to lead a team of Monash researchers over the next five years to find the best elements of mental health laws across the world and determine if they could be applied in Australia.
"The major problem with Australia's mental health system has been people not being able to get treatment at all or not getting sufficient treatment, particularly for high-incidence illnesses such as depression," said Professor McSherry.
"This is largely because the most difficult aspect of the system for the law to regulate has always been ensuring services collaborate and co-operate so people don't slip between the gaps and miss out on the treatment they need."
Professor McSherry's research team plans to conduct a total of more than 200 interviews in countries including Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, England, Ireland and Canada. They will talk to policy makers, judges, health professionals, consumer representatives, carers and other people involved in mental health systems to gain extensive information on the systems in each country.
The ultimate outcome will be the development of comprehensive frameworks of best practice principles that Australia's state, territory and Commonwealth governments and governments overseas could use to create the best possible mental health laws.
"Part of the project will be looking at new ideas to respect as much as possible the autonomy and dignity of those with mental illnesses,"
Professor McSherry
"What we would like to do is, if the Government wants to introduce advanced directives for example, we can say 'OK, this is how you can do it -- these are the different models that are being used across the world, and you pick one that suits'. The frameworks are going to be more flexible than model mental health legislation.
"It certainly won't be model mental health legislation -- we want to get away from that because it has been tried and it didn't work in Australia.
"It's a noble dream to have national legislation, it's just not going to work in practice. Frameworks are different, they give governments options in terms of how they actually couch their laws."