Mental health bill for 2008 was $5.3 billion: Report

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDAug 11 2010

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), the country is spending more and more to deal with its mental ailment burden. This emerged from a report from the AIHW saying that finances spent on mental health services between 2007 to 2008 were $5.3 billion. Of this around 60 per cent came from state and territory governments, 36 per cent from the Commonwealth, and the rest from private health funds.

The report says that expenditure on state and territory mental health services increased on average by almost six per cent per year (adjusted for inflation) between 2003-04 and 2007-08, to $3.3 billion. In 2008-09, more than 21 million mental health-related prescriptions were subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, costing the federal government $742 million. The majority of this cost was for anti-psychotic (51 per cent) and anti-depressant (41 per cent) drugs, many of these prescribed by GPs. The report showed a trend of elderly Australians most likely to see their GP for a mental health issue which includes anxiety and depression but also inability to sleep, substance abuse and dementia. Women however were more likely to see their doctor than men, while indigenous Australians accounted for just one per cent of the GP visits suggesting a barrier to access. The report also showed a slowly rising number of dedicated mental health hospital beds, but from a low base.

According to Institute director Penny Allbon, 2006 Medicare changes could also be responsible for these figures. She said, “This report demonstrates that the growth in expenditure on services is around 6 per cent overall…So with population growth being an annual average of about 1.8 per cent per annum it does indicate that mental health services are keeping up well with population growth, and in fact exceeding population growth.” She pointed out that according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics about one in five Australians experience symptoms of a mental disorder every year.

According to Gary Hanson of the AIHW's Mental Health Services Unit, “Overall, services for people with mental health care needs continue to show a steady increase, generally above the rate of population growth.” Speaking on the importance of primary care and GPs he said, “GPs are often a first contact point for mental health concerns, with an estimated 13.2 million GP-patient encounters involving management of a mental health issue in 2008-09.” Medicare claims made by GPs for subsidized psychiatrist, psychologist and other allied health professional services for their patients also increased by 17 per cent from 3.9 million claims in 2007-08 to 4.6 million in 2008-09. These costs were footed by the federal government – a total of $666 million in 2008-09, reflecting an annual average increase of nearly 27 per cent since 2004-05. Mr. Hanson said the increase reflected in part the introduction of Medicare subsidized access to psychologists. “A clear trend can be seen in the provision of public sector specialized mental health hospital beds, with beds in specialized psychiatric units or wards within public acute hospitals replacing beds in public psychiatric hospitals,” Mr. Hanson said.

This report comes in the wake of the political debate on how much should be spent on mental health.