![](\"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/claire.jpg\")
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I am writing regarding concerns about the cut to \u201cBetter Access\u201d to mental health services.<\/p>\n
I am a \u201cmental health consumer\u201d as well as a student in psychology, an active volunteer and a mother of two young children, in a one-income household. I may be placed in the category that has been frowned upon for accessing the service for some mild depression or \u201clife difficulty\u201d and using too many sessions, living in an average, reasonably well off suburb.\u00a0 But maybe I can tell you part of my story.<\/p>\n
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I suffered from depression after the birth of my second child. This nearly cost us our marriage, and who knows what else? Hadn\u2019t it been for Better Access, and the use of the full 18 sessions, I don\u2019t know how much more I would have cost my family and society.<\/p>\n
I am also bereaved by suicide. I lost my brother to suicide when I was 12, and have been affected by the suicide of other people since then. More recently the beloved principal of my sons school took his own life, and this triggered a huge delayed grief reaction: I have been submerged by morbid dreams most nights \u2013 about suicide, and about death \u2013 for the last 18 months. I cry in most dreams. I wake up, crying, sobbing, unable to find any consolation in all these losses, and then I hide those tears from my children, from my husband, and friends. I have never cried this much in my life. I thought I had \u201cdealt\u201d with this pain, through work with support groups, and through giving back some of the help I had received in doing volunteer work\u2026 I thought I was strong. I thought I was in a good place, when this latest suicide happened. Is it delayed or complicated grief? Is it depression? Whatever it is, it is awful. I get up, heavy hearted, push through dark clouds most mornings, and still, try my utmost to function as well as possible as an individual, as a wife, as a mother who has to ensure her family is fed, loved, cared for, as a student trying to achieve good results, working towards a better future, and as a volunteer, providing care for others.\u00a0 I could not achieve all this without the precious help from the psychologist I am currently seeing. I would not be able to see this psychologist without the Better Access program. If Better Access services were to be replaced by ATAPS, I would not qualify for the services. And I would hate to think what I would be like, actually. I do not want to see another psychologist when it has taken me so long to find the person who I believe can help me restore hope that the world is not such a bad place after all. I am slowly beginning to come through to the other side.<\/p>\n
In Australia, sadly, suicide is the leading cause of death in men under the age of 44, and in men and women under the age of 34. This is something that personally concerns me greatly. Depression doesn\u2019t discriminate against race, age, gender, lifestyle or income. Nor does suicide. Many people don\u2019t want to access mental services because of stigma, or because they may not know what services to access, or may not know that what they are suffering from is actually depression, or may be ashamed about it, and also, because it is costly. And some people may simply think that they don\u2019t deserve this level of care, that they are not worthy.<\/p>\n
I have for a long time thought that I didn\u2019t deserve to see a psychologist because others needed it more than I did, and didn\u2019t think that I should spend money towards psychological services for myself at the cost of my family\u2019s needs\u2026. Having an easier access to mental services has enabled me to get passed this, and seek the help that I very much needed. It has taken me a while to find the right person who is able to slowly help me give voice to the trauma my family and I have suffered. 26 years of tears in 18 months don\u2019t just dissolve in less than 10 sessions\u2026 it has taken more than 16 sessions to actually being gradually able to touch gently on something that has so far been so painful to look at\u2026 it needs to be a slow gentle process so as to not re-traumatize the 12 year old in me who has literally been emotionally deprived and been unable to talk about her brother\u2019s suicide. This is hard to even admit for someone who feels the need to be strong all the time\u2026 Maybe I don\u2019t have a mental illness, maybe I don\u2019t want to be labelled\u2026 maybe for a while I just lost hope\u2026 but my lived experience is real indeed, and so are my dreams and tears, and the intense pain I feel\u2026 and so is my determination to not sink deeper, and not to make my family and my marriage pay this price\u2026. I already feel very unentitled to receiving care, and so I feel and fear I will be viewed as someone not needing such a service. <\/p>\n
I believe that cutting better access services is telling people like me who don\u2019t feel entitled to psychological care, but who nevertheless may very much be in need of help, that indeed they don\u2019t deserve these services. This is further stigmatizing mental health issues, and stigma is one of the reasons why people don\u2019t seek help. If this government is serious about improving mental health, about suicide prevention, about saving lives, then funds need to be put where they are needed, where it works. And Better Access works.<\/p>\n
Who is to determine who really needs therapy and better access services?<\/p>\n
Wasn\u2019t the idea of the service to ensure more people had access to psychological aid?<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t early access to help acting as prevention for further complication, before it becomes serious enough that you need more drastic measures such as hospitalisation?<\/p>\n
Wasn\u2019t the idea of better access services to help reduce the stigma around mental illness to make access to these services easier for everyone?<\/p>\n
And wouldn\u2019t easier access to psychological services and the reducing of stigma associated with accessing those services also help reduce the instances of people committing suicide?<\/p>\n
How many people like me think that they are not entitled to mental health care, but could really benefit from such a service?<\/p>\n
And how, how are cuts to Better Access services going to help improve mental health for all Australians, irrespective of who they are?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am writing regarding concerns about the cut to \u201cBetter Access\u201d to mental health services. I am a \u201cmental health consumer\u201d as well as a student in psychology, an active volunteer and a mother of two young children, in a one-income household. I may be placed in the category that has been frowned upon for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drben.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}