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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-10-17 Daily Xml
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BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (14:51): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the minister representing the Minister for Health questions regarding borderline personality disorder treatment and services in South Australia.

Leave granted.

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT: In February this year I asked a question of the Minister for Health about the lack of adequate treatment services in South Australia for people with mental illness—specifically, borderline personality disorder (BPD). I also raised the BPD issue again in March through a matter of interest. I have as yet had no response from the minister. Instead of a response or the implementation of much-needed services, we have seen the disgraceful shackling to the bed of a prisoner diagnosed with BPD known as Jackie.

While I was in the APY lands investigating services, my staff member attended the second National Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Day event—a conference held at Flinders University—so my office could learn more about this much maligned, poorly-resourced mental illness. While the conference was opened by the federal Minister for Health (Hon. Mark Butler), I understand that his state colleague, minister John Hill, was not in attendance. I believe he did not have a staff member representing him either. Nor was the opposition spokesperson on mental health, Martin Hamilton-Smith, there, despite the fact that he had RSVP'd saying that he would attend.

South Australia has no specific BPD public health services to treat individuals currently. As I have stated in this place before, the last specific service that could adequately provide treatment to people with BPD was a day ward at Glenside Hospital, which closed down in the mid-1990s. We have some counselling services using dialectic behavioural therapy, but these have long waiting lists and there are no one-on-one therapies available in our public system, or crisis intervention or other types of therapies, and there is nothing available in rural South Australia. Patients with BPD in crisis are treated in the emergency department of hospitals and then discharged into a clinical void.

Alternatively, the state of Victoria has a comprehensive specific service called Spectrum. It provides several forms of therapy in groups and individually, and a residential program, follow-up, education, training and information on BPD. It is cost-effective and is providing effective treatment for those with the most severe cases of BPD in that state. My questions to the minister are:

1. Is the minister aware that borderline personality disorder exists in roughly 1 per cent of the Australian population?

2. Is the minister aware that 10 per cent of people with BPD successfully suicide?

3. Will the minister take the lead from Victoria and fund a BPD-specific service such as Spectrum?

4. If the minister will not fund such a service, when will he introduce public one-on-one therapy for people with BPD and open a specific information advisory service for GPs, health professionals and clinicians who work in mental health?

5. Given that there are so few clinicians trained in treating BPD, when will the minister develop a comprehensive training and awareness program on BPD for clinicians and health workers in our public health system?

6. When will the minister publicly release the currently secret report and its recommendations prepared by his South Australian expert reference group on borderline personality disorder?

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for State/Local Government Relations) (14:55): I would like to thank the honourable member for her very important questions and I will certainly refer them to the Minister for Health and Ageing in another place for a quick response. I also make the comment in that it is not unusual for—

The Hon. K.L. Vincent: Define 'quick'.

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY: As fast as we can. There is a process they have to go through and certainly the answer is going to be what satisfies you. In regard to the comment about people not attending this particular conference, it is not unusual; I often go to functions where members of the opposition are acknowledged (three or four of them) and none of them are there, so it is a common tactic they use to make it look like they are out there doing something when they are actually in their living rooms watching TV.

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