The Daily Telegraph
Mental health patients are waiting a year or more to see a psychologist in regional Queensland, with GPs the only option in some areas.
Only two in 10 psychologists are in regional Australia, where 28 per cent of the population lives.
The dire shortage comes as the Federal Government is only meeting 35 per cent of its psychology workforce – the largest shortfall of any mental health workforce – and unlike GPs, there are no incentives for them to relocate to regional areas.
Queensland has 6691 general psychologists and 1455 provisional psychologists.
This is significantly below NSW, even accounting for population (11,530 and 2730 provisional).
Australian Psychological Society president Catriona Davis-McCabe said more regional relocation incentives would get more psychologists into regional communities.
“Millions of young people are doing it tough at the moment. Our governments need to get psychologists into schools to give kids access to psychological care and support where they are, and to save parents concern, time, and money,” Dr Davis-McCabe said.
“We must also lower gap fees for young people and other vulnerable groups who are least equipped to pay for the care they need.
“While it is pleasing to see some recent Federal investment in more psychology university places, much more is needed if we are to address the current access issues our communities face.”
Royal Australia College of General Practitioners rural council chair Michael Clements is a Townsville-based GP who also travels to remote Carpentaria town Karumba.
He said the further you went from large cities, the harder it became to get expert help for mental health issues.
“There isn’t a visiting psychologist, there’s no psychologist that comes,” he said.
Dr Clements said many patients were not interested in talking to a psychologist via phone or the video.
“Some people out there don’t even have video call capabilities, the more remote you go the more people would just skip treatment or avoid treatment because it’s too hard,” he said.
“To be honest a lot of things that psychologists and psychiatrists might do we have to try and do ourselves and we undertake extra training in order to be able to do so.”
The veteran GP said that it needed to be recognised that while telehealth was important, nobody should rest on it being an entirely adequate substitution.
Both Dr Clements and Dr Davis-McCabe called on the Federal Government to increase the rebate for mental health patients.