Mental Health Nursing Report: Overview of Mental Health Services Data

This report, focusing on mental health nursing, provides an overview of mental health services in Australia based on data up to November 2014. It highlights common mental disorders like anxiety, depression, and substance abuse, along with less common conditions such as bipolar and schizoaffective disorders. The report presents statistical data on the prevalence of mental illness, treatment rates, and healthcare expenditure, including the impact of mental illness on mortality and disability. It details the roles of various healthcare providers, such as psychiatrists, psychologists, and general practitioners, and the impact of government subsidies on treatment access. The report also covers specialized mental health care settings, expenditure on mental health services, and the use of restrictive practices in care, such as seclusion. The analysis provides a comprehensive view of the state of mental health services in Australia, offering valuable insights into the challenges and progress in the field.

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Mental Health Nursing
Student’s Name
University Affiliation

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Summary
The Mental Health Services is a report that was published on the Australian website to
provide a glimpse of the annual report of the main statistics as well as related information
regarding mental health services. The report incorporates updates made to the Australian
platform over the duration of one year to November 2014. According to the report, the common
mental disorders or illnesses are drug or substance abuse, anxiety and depression while those less
common are bipolar and schizoaffective disorders as well as schizophrenia. Statistically, the
report shows that about 46% of Australians from teenagers to the elderly experienced some kind
of mental illness at some point in their life time, and about 20% experienced a common mental
illness in the previous one year, that is 2006. Of such, anxiety disorders were very common
affecting over 14% of the Australian population, followed by affective disorder with 6.2 % and
lastly were substance use disorder with about 5.0%. Also, the report shows that the occurrence of
these disorders was common in females compared to their male counterparts in all ages.
Regarding more serious mental illnesses like psychotic disorders, a survey done in 2010 showed
that 0.45% of the people living with this condition sought treatment annually from mental health
services in the public sector. The impact of mental illness from the report indicates that up to 3%
of Australians have serious mental disorders while 4 to 6% have moderate disorders and further
10 to 12% have mild disorders. Ideally, in 2011, the author states that mental illness was the
primary cause of over 750 deaths. Statistics show that mental plus behavioural disorders are the
primary drivers of disability and according to the report, it was estimated that mental behaviour
and disorders were responsible for the 12% of the burden of diseases in Canada in 2003.
The report also shows that the state and territory government provides health care
services to people with mental illnesses by providing more facilities and healthcare providers to

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deal with the psychotic illnesses and mental behaviour. A report by the National Survey of
Mental Health and Wellbeing show that the population treatment of people with psychotic and
mental illness was about 35% where of these; 23%, 38% and 71% consulted a psychiatrist, a
psychologist and a general practitioner in that order. According to the report, recent evidence
shows that the low treatment rates found in 2007 have tremendously increased due to the
inclusion of government subsidized mental health medications items to the Medicare benefits
schedule in late 2006. Australians with mental illnesses benefit from mental health care services
provided by healthcare experts in different care settings which have seen the number of
psychiatric disorders decline in the country in the recent past. Specialized mental health care is
provided in different health care facilities and the services type’s ranges from public hospitals,
residential and community or private psychiatric centres. In these facilities, the service type
differs significantly with the number of beds provided for the patients.
Results from the report show that in 2011 to 2012, the Australian recurrent expenditure
on services related to mental health was $7.0 billion where over $4.0 billion was used on
state/territory specialized mental health services. Regarding the mental health care services plus
support, it was estimated that there were over sixteen million mental related GP encounters in
Australia in the financial year 2012/2013. In the same year, the GP provided over 2.3 million
Medicare benefits schedule mental health services to over 1.3 million Australian patients. The
report finds that psychologists provided over 3.4 million Medicare benefits subsidized mental
health services to almost 850, 000 patients across Australia in the year 2012/2013. Regarding the
mental health-related treatment, there were almost 30 million prescriptions distributed for mental
health treatments in the year 2012/2013. Statistically, 85 % of these prescriptions were provided
by GP, 7% by psychiatrists and 8 % by non-psychiatrists.

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Regarding the expenditure, about $7.2 billion was spent on mental health-related services
in the country in the year 2011/2012, where $0.851 billion went to the Medicare subsidized
mental health related while $0.854 billion went to the mental health-related prescriptions.
Regarding the governance and expenditure, over $4.4 billion was spent on territory and state
mental health services, while $ 0.333 million on specialized mental health services private health
centres. According to the report, about 13.5% of the community health care were recorded to
have received an involuntary mental health care in the year 2011/2012, and they included people
with schizoaffective as well as schizophrenia disorders. The report also states that clients
admitted to the mental health care centres might have experienced restrictive practices like
seclusion with the aim of protecting clients as well as others from imminent dangers. Finally, the
report states that there were 9.6 seclusions per 1 000 bed in public acute mental health care
centres in 2012/2013.

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References
Kreisfeld, R., Harrison, J. E., & Pointer, S. C. (2014). Australian Institute of Health and
Welfare. Canberra, Australia: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.