By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Covid-19 has only widened the mental health system’s cracks for a long-suffering Noble Park single father and his teen son.
‘Rick’ cares for his seriously afflicted 15-year-old son ‘Michael’ by himself. In 2018, he told the Star Journal that it was like ‘Groundhog Day’.
And the Groundhog Day goes on – in the midst of a Royal Commission into Victoria’s mental health system.
“Even one of the (health service) managers said the system was completely f***ed,” Rick says
Michael is diagnosed with severe anxiety and a borderline disorder.
He has self-harmed, he can’t face school and strangers, finds it hard to sleep and is only comforted by video games and heavy-metal tunes.
“At 3am, he wakes me up and cries,” Rick told Star Journal two years ago.
“He screams about his family, who hardly visit him.
“He thinks everyone has abandoned him, he thinks everyone hates him.”
Now he says Michael’s condition is worse. In recent times, his increased medication makes him sleepier but he remains agitated.
“He is not an aggressive kid. He’s frustrated because no one is helping him.
“He’s been on medication since he was 11 or 12 – it’s way too long for a child.
“But this is the system.”
During Covid-19, Rick and Michael have been even more alone.
For starters, the boy won’t go out of the house because he “doesn’t want to get the virus”.
Due to the pandemic, he has barely seen his two support workers since March.
In October, Michael was visited by his Monash Health Early in Life Mental Health Service (ELMHS) worker for the first time in about seven months.
Rob says another support worker from a Cranbourne-based agency hadn’t seen Michael since about February.
Youth mental health service, headspace, ended its assistance due to Michael’s case being “too hard”, Rob says.
“They said it’s not working. (Michael) is not talking so they pulled the pin.”
In the meantime, Rob’s application for NDIS funding for respite relief has stalled since February.
All he wants is a trained person to take Michael camping or fishing on weekends, to get him “out of the house”.
But Michael’s health specialists still haven’t filled out their part of the NDIS application form, Rob says.
He’s regularly made forlorn pleas for help to health services and his local MP and Premier Daniel Andrews’s electorate office in Noble Park.
“When you’re a parent, you’ll protect your kids at any cost.”
Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council’s NDIS manager Neil Turton-Lane is assisting Rick and Michael after Star Journal notified him of the case.
“In many ways I feel the Covid-19 lockdown has just exacerbated existing failings and inadequacies within our current mental health system – in this case adolescent mental health – by bringing them more to light.”
In 2019, a mental health Royal Commission handed down an interim report – with the second round of hearings on hold due to the pandemic.
It called for substantially more investment in mental health and a centre to collaborate lived experience, research and clinical and non-clinical care.
“The Commission’s work to date confirms that Victoria’s mental health system is not just compromised—it is afflicted by systemic failings,” the interim report stated.
Rob calls it a “crisis”.
“There’s people dying out there.
“I know hundreds of families in the same boat.”
The State Government was contacted for comment.
If you need help, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyond blue on 1300 22 4636.
