Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health: Submission to Select Committee on Mental Health and Suicide Prevention

Even without the COVID-19 pandemic, rural communities experience a number of issues disproportionately which may have an impact on their mental health and the rates of rural suicide. We have addressed these issues in more detail in a series of analysis which are appended to this submission. These experiences include the sequential and cumulative impact of rural adversity such as drought, bushfires, floods cyclones, pests (e.g., mice); the economic and social impacts of such events; and the failure of markets and public services to provide efficient and responsive mental health and support services to rural and remote communities. These issues are not new and are recognised to some degree in recent reports by the Productivity Commission, the Victorian Royal Commission, the Senate Select Committee on Rural
Mental Health etc. While the incidence of mental health problems in rural communities is similar to that in cities, the outcomes are poorer, and the rates of rural suicide remain stubbornly higher than those in Sydney and Melbourne.
The pandemic has accentuated the impact of these well-known challenges. Innovations such as ehealth and e-mental health services have been adopted and are welcome. To some extent, they mitigate the full impact of the pandemic on non-urban areas.
However, underlying issues and inequities remain. How these new services translate into improved rates of access to mental health care in the bush is not clear. There is data indicating that people in rural areas were especially vulnerable to mental health problems during the COVID‐19 restrictions. Colossal gaps in clinical and psychosocial services remain. Where services are available, they are often not provided by trained health care staff but rather by whoever is present and available. This makes it doubly important that integrated planning for rural and remote mental health care looks beyond the health system, to the range of ancillary social and community services that exist on the ground and can help local people in need.
Our submission is structured on the framework of the Orange Declaration on Rural Mental Health developed and endorsed by rural experts across Australia and published in 2019.