Sometimes I sit in a conference or meeting about Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD) and wonder to myself how long it will be before someone mentions poverty. Usually the answer is ‘never’. It’s kind of bizarre, because most of the people I hear speak about AOD are passionate people with a progressive perspective. These are people who probably do care about health inequality, but they don’t often (at least not publicly) link it with poverty. Why is that?
I really want you to have a look at the excellent article by a friend of First Step Sebastian Rosenberg, and his colleagues about the link between poverty and access to mental health support and treatment:
For richer, but not for poorer: how Australia’s mental health system fails those most in need
This is a truly insightful, easy to understand article about the disparity of access to mental health services based on wealth. If you’ve only got a minute, skip the rest of this blog and jump to the article.
What the research highlights, in the form of hard data, is that people living in poverty experience MUCH higher levels of mental distress yet receive MUCH less mental health support. With some kinds of care, poorer people are 7 times more likely to need support and 1/6th as likely to receive it. I think it’s a reasonable bit of maths to multiply that 7 by the 6 and say that this particular piece of analysis shows that wealthier people receive 42 times more care (need based) than poorer people.
I’m going to draw another bow, that I expect the authors of the article would agree with, even though it was not their main point. And that is that poor people are proportionally more like to suffer from mental distress or mental illness. There is a whole school of research behind this point, the essence of which is encapsulated well in the description of poverty as ‘the cause of the causes’ of mental illness.
By why should this be? Why should poor people suffer worse mental health. Well, because mental distress is always exacerbated by stress and trauma, and usually in fact it is caused by it. Mental illness does not strike with the role of a dice or at the whim a mean-spirited deity. It’s causal. I doubt anyone reading this would disagree that if a person is abandoned at birth, lives in 20 housing arrangements by the time they turn 18, does not finish school and is abused and neglected as a child . . . they are likely to suffer from mental illness.
Yes, mental illness can happen to anyone. BUT, wealth (at least being of average wealth in a wealthy country like Australia) is a massive protective factor against homelessness, hunger, being taken advantage of, early school leaving, lack of good role-models, low income-attainment, having no choices but bad choices, lack of mental health treatment etc etc.
Please be aware of the link between wealth inequality and mental illness. A poor person is not broken or hopeless or pathetic or cursed. In fact, they may well be amazingly resilient and resourceful. But they are at risk, and they at a terrible disadvantage. And our mental health system is, in the main, falling well short of making up the difference.
Patrick Lawrence Chief Executive Officer |
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