Background of Mental Health Week
Mental Health Week in Australia was first started in 1985 and has been continuing since then. Mental health week is considered as an awareness week in Australia. The event is celebrated every year in October, deliberately covering 10th October because of World Mental Health Day. Mental Health Week (MHW) is coordinated and supported by the Western Australian Association in order to provide an opportunity to highlight and address the inevitable connection between mental health and social determinants. Mental Health Week also promotes evidence-based prevention strategies to make sure that people are mentally healthy (Government of Australia, 2022). The rate of Mental Health has been on a decline in Australia for ages and the problem is affecting non-government and government agencies alike. The gravity of poor mental health is reflected on the increasing rate of death in Australia. According to the data provided by the government of Australia, one in five Australians experience issues in mental health. The cases of severe mental health distress keeps on increasing and in 2019, the statistics of the cases reached 7.3%. In 2015, substance use disorders and mental health issues were responsible for 12% of the total disease rate in Australia. In 2018, there were a total of 381 registered suicide cases in which 86 were female and 295 were males (Australian Government, 2020). The aim of this paper is to understand the importance of Mental Health Week and the value of social media and community in mental health initiatives.
There are plenty of evidences to indicate that the condition of mental health in Australia is declining over the past couple of years. The increasing rate of mental health issues across all community, especially oppressed and marginalised communities in Australia, suggests the evident need of mental health initiatives like Mental Health Week. Australia respond to this issue by focusing on building a system characterised by inconsistency and fragmentation, however, the initiative of conducting mental health week every year on October proved to be working with an aim of making a difference. The aim of the Mental Health Week is to give a safe space for each territory and state in Australia to conduct their own week with their own theme that they believe would address the issue the best. The aim of the event is to improve awareness on a community level and interest in wellbeing and mental health. Mental health week promotes the engagement of communities in events and activities that promote wellbeing and mental health and also reduce stigma surrounding mental illness and helps in understanding how stigmas impact the lives of people of different communities (McGorry, Bates, & Birchwood, 2013).
The government and non-government agencies play a significant role in making mental health initiatives successfully. The government of Australia supports and funds a number of mental health initiatives and suicide prevention services for its people. Similarly, the Mental Health Week is funded by the government for the successful conduction of the diverse events of the week like art exhibitions, morning teas, workshops, sporting activities, seminars, balls and fundraisers. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics, more than half of the adult population of Australia reported being impacted by mental disorder at some point in their life (Corrigan, Druss, & Perlick, 2014). Mental Health Services’ framework is a complex mixture of private and public systems, where funding is shared between Australian, territory and state governments, private and individuals health insurers. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) reported that government and non-government together have spent $9 billion for mental health services in 2015-16. In 2017, the government spent $1.2 billion to support mental health services (Government Australia, 2022).
Gravity of Mental Health Issues in Australia
Despite these high rates of Mental health issues, stigma continuous to flourish in various parts of Australia. Events included in mental health week are developed to address and reduce these stigmas that, many times, cost people their life. The success rate of any mental health initiatives is decided by the number of people who are aware of the initiatives. The government provide financial support to agencies to make sure that the information of these initiatives is being promoted at an effective level. However, the non-funding parts need equal attention as well. In situation like these, the non-governmental agencies play their roles (Lyons, Laugharne, Laugharne, & Appiah-Poku, 2015). CEO of the Mental Health Council of Australia, Frank Quinlan, in 2012, said that ‘non-government agencies and organizations that are working and delivering mental health services sometimes are more efficient and knowledgeable at sharing insights to make the policies and legislations better.’ There are times when NGOs reach better to the public than Government agencies which makes the process of spreading awareness easier. There are three focal points of NGOs regarding mental health issues- treatment of drug addiction, re-integration of recovered people back into society, and awareness and advocacy creation in communities and schools (Byrne, Wilson, Burke, Gaskin, & Happell, 2014).
There are multiple evidence-based treatments for anxiety and depression and other mental health disorders/illness, however, awareness and treatments are still ‘hard to reach’ in different social and community groups. For example, a report published in 2020 stated that Aboriginal community in Australia experience anxiety (59%) and depression (52%) at higher level than non-Aboriginal Australians, whose percentage, at the same year, were observed to be 47% and 32% for anxiety and depression respectively. In 2018, the condition of Aboriginal community was the same, around 23% of Torres Strait Islanders and 31% of Aboriginal people reported experiencing high levels of psychological issues. Government statistics show that Aboriginal community are more likely to suffer from dementia or depression than other Australians. In 2019, January, Australia reported death of seven Aboriginal children by suicide. Despite Australia’s commendable financial status, the mental health statistics for Aboriginal community are alarming and dire. The reason for the declining mental health is obvious and known by many- racism, oppression, unemployment, poverty and disenfranchisement (Jorm, Bourchier, Cvetkovski, & Stewart, 2012).
Similarly, the old-age group of Australia are becoming a group of higher levels of mental health issues. According to a report, it is estimated that there will be 2 billion old age people in Australia by 2050. By this point, children will be outnumbered by old age group. This requires changes in policies developed for aged people to make sure that the community is efficiently resourced, including mental health services. In 2019, it was estimated that a total of 10-15% older Australians experience depression or anxiety (Muir-Cochrane, O’Kane, Barkway, Oster, & Fuller, 2014). A common morbidity of suicide is depression and men over the age of 85 have the highest rate of suicide death rate. Loneliness and social isolation are forces impacting mental well-being of older people. A research conducted on 2019 found that 19% of older people in Australia experience emotional loneliness and 8% have experienced social isolation. According to the data published by the government, older people are the lowest customers of government and publicly funded health care services, including mental health services compared to younger and other age groups (Health Direct, 2020).
Role of Government and Non-Government Agencies in Mental Health Initiatives
Another community that are a victim of oppression and have to face the power of majority are immigrants, refugee, migrants and asylum-seeker. Mental health status of these groups is on a declining path and there are many evidences supporting the claim. The psychological distress experienced by refugees and migrants are concerning. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the most common disorder experienced by these groups (Grant & Luxford, 2011). There are barriers present that are stopping them from having access to healthcare services which include- employment, economics, language difficulties, cultural difference, legal obstacles, under-trained workforce, and the impact of current economic and legal barriers. There are many instances where the government and the people of Australia have shown indifferences towards marginalized community, for example, The Tampa Crisis, where Howard government and Australian troops boarded freighter MV Tampa away from Christmas Island (Germov, 2014).
Taking the above mentioned issues and prejudices against minority community of Australia, the government has developed and supported the development of mental health services like Mental Health Week, which are based on conflicting and contrasting notional and theoretical ideas regarding mental health. Mental Health Week is a programme that is deemed reasonable to promote and implement because it exclusively believe in promoting evidence and information based approach to improve mental health issues. For example, Mental Health Week replaces cosmological beliefs of Aboriginal community with proper biomedical education. The same goes for other groups as well, for example- youths of poor background are more prone to becoming a workaholic and workaholism is associated with poor mental health. Mental Health Week promotes the importance of rest and conduct events that reflects how even small things that people mostly ignore could disrupt the mental peace (Cyril, Smith, Possamai-Inesedy, & Renzaho, 2015). Therefore, engagement of all communities, especially minority communities, is as important, if not more, as other groups of Australia. The network of people, ideas and places grows in a dynamic way that evolves the services they participated in. Engagement of communities in services, including Mental Health Week, enhances the implementation and promotes the development of the service’s culturally competent factors and a greater control over mental health. According to the reports of a case study conducted in a rural South African District, there are plenty of benefits of the engagement of communities in mental health services. Facilitating engagement of communities, especially marginalized communities, helped participants feel reconnection with cherished roles, help achieve Mental Health Week long-term goals and allow and encourage people of communities develop feelings of belonging, self-efficacy and wellbeing (Sage Journals, 2012).
The major goal of Mental Health Week is to engage communities in events and activities that encourage the promotion of mental health and wellbeing. Engagement of communities in these events would increase empathy and understanding and will reduce stigma associated with mental illness. Communities, especially marginalized ones, need education to understand the importance of mental health and the services launched by the government and non-government agencies for them.
The growing rate of mental health issues poses significant challenges for healthcare systems globally. The government and mental health professionals are therefore keen to develop services that will address the issue. Mental Health Week is one such initiative that aims to reduce stigma, raise awareness and encourage communities to seek help when necessary and promote mentally healthy activities. However, even the most effective and famous interventions need promotion. According to the report ‘Health and wellbeing’, there are four major approaches to mental health promotion and one of them are mass and social media. The utilization of social media in mental health promotion is properly established. It includes the use of magazines, newspapers, television, apps and television. There are several social media and mass media campaign techniques uses in Australia such as- Victorian’s Government’s road safety campaign and Australia’s Quit smoking (Neiger, et al., 2012).
Need for Community Involvement and Social Media in Mental Health Awareness
Adolescents and youths are emerged in social Medias; hence, they have potential to promote mental health services. Social media is a toolbox for spreading information on any given topic. Social media also promotes mental health services like Mental Health Week. Mental health promotion is the process of allowing people to enhance and increase control over health determinants and thereby improve their own health. The extensive usage of social networks and media by youth could result in two possibilities. First, it could increase the number of opportunities of interaction of individuals across the globe and second, the effect could be entirely negative. It depends on the presentation of the campaign. Mental health week can be promoted in social media so that the youth can learn more about it spread the information further (Ramanadhan, Mendez, Rao, & Viswanath, 2013).
Conclusion
Mental health week is a service practiced in Australia where the promotion of mental health safety in communities is kept as a priority. It takes place every year on October to make the event coincide with Mental Health Awareness Day. Communities in Australia are in dire need of help as their mental health status is declining on a constant rate since ages. There have been many initiatives takes by the government in order to address the issue, however, lack of education, racism and the title of ‘minority’ act as hindrance. Aboriginal, old-age and immigrants community suffer extensively from the lack of accessibility to mental health services which happen because of lack of awareness. One of the main reasons for the development of Mental Health Week is to spread awareness in such communities in order to enlighten them about all those services that are accessible to them. To make everyone aware about the existence of Mental Health Week, rigorous promotion is needed. One such great way of promotion is social media. Social media is used by almost everyone, especially youth, and they extract information mostly from internet. Mental health week could be promoted in social media because the information spread faster through social media than any other means. Communities will be able to learn about mental health service, including Mental Health Week through social media easily.
Reference
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