“How should we manage these people if we can’t use medical or chemical restrictions?” McRae said. “We will end up with bad legislation if this happens in Parliament, and it will suddenly become quite unfeasible. In the process, there will be deaths, not just patients and health workers, but innocent spectators.”
However, Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council executive director Craig Wallace said the mental health system needed to be reformed to ensure patients with acute distress receive support before it reaches the point of psychosis.
“Any instance of restraint and confinement is detrimental and traumatic for those who in the greatest hour of need go to a service to be cared for, to receive a compassionate and humane response,” Wallace said. “Instead, they are being punished and traumatized.”
McRae said the government had conducted few consultations with the medical community and called for the draft legislation to be withdrawn or referred to a parliamentary committee for further review.
The opposition does not yet have a formal position on the government’s change proposals, which will be debated in the upper house in the coming months. Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party says they will table amendments to remove plans to eliminate isolation and moderation within 10 years.
Opposition mental health spokeswoman Emma Kealy said McRae’s claim the government had not consulted widely was “more evidence” that Labor relied on health advice in line with its political agenda. .
“Actions speak louder than words,” Kealy said. “Victorians deserve a government that offers a positive plan to solve Victoria’s health crisis, but remember this November that Labor are only obsessed with the control, turn and policy of COVID.”
A Victorian government spokeswoman said the new bill laid the groundwork for reforming the mental health system and acknowledged that shutting people down and restricting them offered no therapeutic benefits.
“Work on the royal commission’s recommendations is underway to build a new, more sensitive and compassionate mental health system that upholds the rights of anyone receiving mental health and wellness treatment and care,” he said.
Orygen Youth Health CEO Patrick McGorry said it was possible to eliminate moderation and isolation because other countries had achieved it.
“The first principle is intervention,” McGorry said. “You want to drastically reduce the number of people who get into this state of ill health.”
Patrick McGorry, executive director of Orygen Youth Health.
Stuart Grimley, of the Justice Party, said the government “lived on earth” according to its draft laws.
“The safety of health care workers must be paramount when changing the laws that treat unpredictable and sometimes psychotic patients, but that has not been done in this case.”
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