Author of ‘Mental State’ Dr Mark Cross says young people left ‘scarred’ in post-lockdown mental health pandemic

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Australia's mental health report card shows an urgent need for improvement in an overworked and underfunded system. Psychiatrist Dr Mark Cross, author of 'Mental State', is very familiar with both as a practitioner - and a patient himself.

Transcript

00:00I do public work again, so you go in and out, and I'm now back doing telehealth, actually.

00:09But when you've got daily grind of people coming into the emergency department, so that's

00:13always the sharp section of where people need to access help, and they sit there for days

00:21sometimes waiting for access to a bed, or they get turned away.

00:25So one example, I was on ABC Q&A two years ago, and a member of the audience stood up,

00:30I'll never forget her, she looked at me and said, we took my brother in, he was suicidal,

00:37he was sent home, and he died.

00:40What can you do?

00:41And I said, we have to do better.

00:43We have to do better.

00:44That's all I could say.

00:45And if you're watching this, you were a great inspiration for me writing this book.

00:52Amazing.

00:53How much of that weight have you carried with you?

00:59You know, I always bat questions away from me, because I still think, oh, you shouldn't

01:02talk about me, I shouldn't accept all these things, I shouldn't talk about not being able

01:08to do my job.

01:09Because how we were trained, and that's how I look at it in the book, how we were trained

01:12was to be stiff upper lip, don't share of yourself, you know, people look up to you,

01:17you have to just be there for everyone.

01:19And that's the problem.

01:20It's part of the problem, isn't it?

01:21It's part of the problem.

01:22And frontline workers, doctors, nurses, paramedics, anyone working in the system, they carry this

01:29with them, they carry this with them, because they can't be open, because they're scared

01:33of losing their job, or being seen as not able to fulfill their job.

01:38That's part of the huge problem.

01:40And so they carry on, carry on, carry on, until, like me, you finally realize you've

01:45got PTSD, or you've got some sort of anxiety, you can't cope, you're crying, you don't want

01:50going to work, but you can't talk because you can't be open.

01:55And then there's a horrible rabbit well, and then everyone's leaving.

02:00Yeah.

02:01I remember talking to a doctor during COVID.

02:05And he said, we're dealing with COVID right now, but the next pandemic will be a mental

02:10health pandemic.

02:13Is that what we're seeing now?

02:14Do you think?

02:15Well, if you look at Victoria, especially, you know, after all their lockdowns, young

02:20people especially have really developed mental health issues from that.

02:24And we're still seeing, you know, it's like waves, isn't it from from then, even though

02:28it feels like 10 years ago now, doesn't it?

02:31But you're still seeing waves from then with young people having really been scarred by

02:35the experience.

02:37And I don't know if you're, you know, I always make things a bit personal for people.

02:42So just yesterday, my tennis coach, a neighbor at the shopping center, two friends and an

02:47ex-secretary of mine all contacted me for help with one of their loved ones because

02:51they're desperate, because they can't get help for them.

02:55That's the nature of the beast, right?

02:57Yeah.

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