Human rights and mental health, Thinking about suicide book launch
10/11/2010
Dr Helen Szoke, Commissioner, Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission
I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land and to pay my respects to elders past and present.
It is interesting being here today to facilitate the Melbourne launch of David Webb's book, Thinking about suicide. David is a good friend of the Commission, is an active campaigner for the human rights of people with disabilities and is a valued member of the Commission's Disability Reference Group. There is much that David and I agree on and there is much that we disagree about. But what I am absolutely sure about, is the importance of giving voice to all points of view, and all considerations in the challenging area of suicide.
David's work, initially on his PhD in 2006, and now in the production of this book http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/product.php?xProd=528, is both courageous and much needed.
Around 2,000 Australians die by suicide ever year,1 affecting families, friends, workplaces and communities. As author Alison Wertheimer has described, 'suicide ... is rather like throwing a stone into a pond; the ripples spread and spread'.2 But the story is much bigger than this - many more people struggle with life and live with their stories.
And for some people, these are stories of discrimination. Discrimination and mental health issues are inextricably linked. The conditions and experiences of discrimination can lead to years of confusion, alienation, marginalisation and bullying. Tragically, these types of experiences have been associated with the much higher rates of suicide amongst gay and lesbian young people, for example. One national study indicated that their suicide rate is four times that of heterosexual young people and is generally occurring at a much earlier age - at just 15 years.3
In his book, David tells us his story about living with suicidal impulses and makes his own contribution to the research and methodology of suicidology. David reminds us that sometimes, medical explanations and interventions can get in the way of understanding the suicidal impulse. Fundamentally, he speaks of the importance of listing to people's first-person knowledge and he tells of spiritual wisdom and an understanding of the whole Self as a key to healing for him.
While I am not endorsing any particular approach to health care (and indeed nor is David in this work), he raises some important human rights issues for us to consider and learn from.
Human rights are those rights one needs to live a dignified life - a life worthy of a human being. Yet people who experience psychological distress are often subject to a wide range of human rights violations, including discrimination.
Here in Victoria, the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities recognises that all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Public authorities have an obligation to uphold these basic human rights and to take a human rights-based approach to their work - to the way they make decisions, create laws, set policies and provide services.
What does this mean for mental health services? It means that people have the right to participate in decisions that affect them - having a say in defining their own best interests, in articulating their needs and in designing their own solutions. As David puts so well in his book, 'suicide prevention needs to hear from those who know suicide "from the inside"'. This is what a human rights-based approach is all about. We need to put the suicidal person in the conversation, recognise their dignity and individual autonomy as a human being.
There are of course many different views about what this means in practice. But having an open conversation in the community about it is vital and I congratulate David on his important contribution.
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1ABS, 2008.
2Alison Wertheimer, A Special Scar: the experiences of people bereaved by suicide, 2nd edition, 2001, p 4.
3Jonathon Nicholas and John Howard, 'Better dead than gay?', Youth Studies Australia, Vol.17, No.4, December 1998. See also Howard J., Nicholas J., Brown N. and Karaca A. (2002) Same sex attracted youth and suicide. In: Rowling L., Martin G. and Walker L. (eds) Mental Health Promotion and Young People: Concepts and Practice. Sydney: McGraw Hill.
Frank
Frank Hall-Bentick
www.hallbentick.net
www.adipef.org.au
for Australian Indigenous Arts & Crafts go to www.tiwiart.com
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