The story of an Ulverstone woman who says her life was saved after being admitted to a private mental health facility shows that Tasmania still has “work to do” regarding primary care, the state’s peak mental health body says.
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On Monday, Fairfax Tasmania detailed the plight of Karalyn Hingston, who had mental ill-health and was suicidal before being referred to the Calvary Clinic.
Ms Hingston said the experience at the clinic “changed my life”.
In 2017, Ms Hingston made a submission to the Legislative Council’s acute health services inquiry, in which she explained her situation before and after she was admitted to the Calvary Clinic.
During appointments with various medical practitioners, she was unable to get the help she required.
“They had a person ‘screaming’ for help and didn’t respond with any real answers,” Ms Hingston wrote in her submission.
It was only due to Ms Hingston’s cousin, a medical specialist, arranging for her to be referred to the Calvary Clinic that Ms Hingston received the care she needed.
In her submission to the upper house inquiry, Ms Hingston said further training around mental health care was needed for medical professionals and that mental illness should not be viewed as less of a priority than serious physical ailments.
Mental Health Council of Tasmania chief executive Connie Digolis said Karalyn’s experience did not surprise her.
“Quite rightly, we have higher expectations of our health services to be able to provide that compassionate and appropriate response,” she said.
“And sometimes that’s lacking.
“[Karalyn’s story] tells us we still have more work to do in regards to primary care and making sure that [medical practitioners] have access to up-to-date information, to knowing where the services are, what level of support and range of support they provide and, more importantly, how their patients can actually be referred into them.”
Ms Digolis said MHCT’s Moving Towards a Mentally Healthy Tasmania campaign, launched earlier this year, aimed to address much of what Karalyn was calling for in her submission.
The campaign seeks to educate Tasmanians on what a good mental health care system should look like, what they can expect to get from such a system and what that contemporary model of care is.
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