An appeal about recent decisions by The State Health System

Seems to me from recent news on the TV that the Western Australian Health System is in some kind of crisis. When health systems go into crisis, when decisions are made to cut costs by reducing staffing levels, which seems to be the strategy, it seems to me that people die as a result. The sad thing is that many of these people are young, and many of them young men who with a little bit of help could go on to do great things, and be good people to have around.

I have a psychology background and my first novel has undertaken some small exploration into mental health issues in one of the protagonists. The novel that I am currently working on deals with families coping in the two speed economy that is the reality of life in a mining boom state. So it is likely that this one will also deal with mental health issues in some form or other. It's something I believe in strongly, the need for people to be provided with sufficient support to be able to get back on their feet. One in five people experience mental illness at some stage in their lives. That means just about every family is touched by it. For the pragmatic politicians out there, that is an awful lot of voters.

When assistance for mental health is reduced, everything else suffers - the rate of crime and incarceration goes up and this creates an increase in suffering which spreads out to affect a lot of people. The employment participation rate goes down. For those who only see things in economic terms, it also costs an awful lot of money, and expenditure that would be unnecessary if the health system was fixed first.  

Those politicians who think only in terms of single issues, tied to short term economic gain or saving, and refuse to contemplate the broader ramifications of their decisions, are doing the country a disservice.  Politics is a hard job, I suspect, but this one needs to be rethought. Surely.