Labor’s mental health plan adds insult to injury for people in poverty

Labor’s mental health funding announcement today ignores the expertise of people in poverty who been telling governments and self-interested charities for years what we desperately need to improve our mental ill health and reduce suicidality: Enough money to live.

**Warning: The following comments may be distressing for people who are affected by suicide, ideation or mental ill health. Crisis line contact information is available at the end of this page.**

• Despite making up a small proportion of the population, data published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows that around a third of adult suicide deaths are people on just two Centrelink payments – 1 in 5 people who die by suicide are on the JobSeeker payment, while 14% are on the Disability Support Pension. Suicide rates for people on unemployment payments (JobSeeker and Youth Allowance) reduced by 37.4% between 2019 and 2020, when these payments were temporarily increased by $275 a week, bringing JobSeeker to the Henderson poverty line. See: aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/population-groups/socioeconomically-disadvantaged/income-support-recipients
• 93% of people with “mutual” obligations who responded to an Antipoverty Centre survey of 600 people told us “mutual” obligations harm their mental or physical health. In 278 optional written responses related to this question, the two most common themes were anxiety (135 mentions) and stress (112 mentions).Depression was mentioned 78 times. See: apcentre.substack.com/p/survey-93-of-welfare-recipients-say
• In 2021, Professor Maree Tesson from Australia’s Mental Health Think Tank said that Centrelink payments at the poverty line “is absolutely the first and most decisive action the Australian Government could take to address the youth mental health crisis.” See: theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/10/experts-urge-higher-income-support-payments-to-stem-youth-mental-health-crisis

Quotes attributable to Antipoverty Centre spokesperson and DSP recipient Kristin O’Connell

We know that the welfare system – through appallingly low Centrelink payments, abusive “mutual” obligations and compulsory income control – is causing widespread mental ill health, and fuelling suicide. We know this because of the extraordinary number of people in distress who seek help from the Antipoverty Centre, and because the statistics tell us so.

It is no surprise that mental health services are under increasing strain as the government utterly fails in its response to spiralling living costs.

There is not enough funding on the planet to improve the mental health of people experiencing distress because they are in poverty, homeless, in debt, because Centrelink payments are too low and exclude too many.

There is no denying mental health services are under strain. That is because people whose health issues are caused by factors that are easily fixed are trying to get care.

If people were not in such enormous financial distress, services would have more capacity for those of us who have complex psychosocial conditions – conditions that are also exacerbated by the fact that we are trying to survive without enough money to live.

We need Centrelink payments above the poverty line. We need “mutual” obligations and parasitic (un)employment services providers abolished. And we need the government to support our mental wellbeing by acting instead of forcing us to tell them this over and over and over.

Media contact: email media at antipovertycentre.org or call/message 0413 261 362 via Signal