Today, I have joined with other mental health experts from across Australia at the Australian Rural & Remote Mental Health in Hobart to confront the amplified concerns of suicide and harm prevention for rural and remote Australians.
Our Aussie farmers are in the midst of one of the worst droughts we have ever seen. While the country is remarkably pulling together to provide as much financial assistance as it can, the mental health toll is worrying.
We already know, one in five Australians living in rural and remote areas experience mental illness, the same proportion as those in our city areas.
Yet it is these very people with the least access to mental health services that face the greatest risk of suicide and other mental health problems.
Statistics show that obesity and alcohol addiction are all amplified in small or remote towns of Australia.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2017), 69% of people in rural communities are obese or overweight, and 23% of people exceed the healthy guidelines for alcohol consumption while suicide rates are 1.7% higher in remote areas as compared to metropolitan areas.
Yet only 10% of our psychiatrists and one third of are nurses are located in rural areas.
I am passionate about creating greater access to mental health assistance outside of our urban areas.
In an ideal world, every person should have access to medical or psychological treatment when overcoming mental illness or addiction.
The national online project, the Impulsivity Project, has been developed with the support of the University of Newcastle, to provide evidence-based techniques to help Australians work through their impulse control issues, through the convenience of the internet.
Using a combination of mindfulness and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, the program is designed to help people gain control over their impulsive behaviour with a particular focus on binge drinking, impulsive binge eating, explosive anger and rage.
