Letters
Mental health
Volume 184 - Issue 6

The risks of a “Commonwealth Solution” for mental health

Author:  Michael Guy Duke

Med J Aust 2006; 184 (6): 309. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2006.tb00252.x
Published online: 20 March 2006
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Michael Guy Duke

Psychiatrist, Family Counselling Service, Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, 279 High Street, Northcote, VIC 3070. mmgdukeATbigpond.net.au

To the Editor: Rey seems to me to have struck upon the ideal solution for the 20% of Australians who suffer from the various mental illnesses.1 Daniel Defoe (The shortest way with dissenters) would doubtless have approved. There is ample European precedent in the idea of a “ship of fools”.

The solution, as Rey says, is to ship everyone diagnosed with a mental illness to a Pacific island. This would solve many problems at a stroke. The population of Australia would be reduced by 20% (and this would be continually improved as more cases develop), thus freeing resources for proper healthy Australians. Thoroughly screened (for mental illnesses) refugees and asylum seekers would easily enter the depleted urban centres.

General practices would have a reduction of more than 40% of patients, as we all know this is roughly the percentage of people presenting with primarily mental health problems. No more crisis with general practitioner numbers. Hospitals would have a similar reduction of cases. No more shortages of hospital beds. Single vehicle traffic fatalities would surely reduce, if alcohol and other drug-dependent people were to be included under the umbrella of one of the mental illnesses.

I envisage a whole fleet of Tampas flowing back and forth to the Pacific nations, ferrying more than 4 million psychiatric emigrants to their proper places in the world.

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