One can hear the stress, fatigue, sadness, helplessness and sometimes despair behind a great many of the tweets and posts on Australian social media - especially from those living in regional areas around the country.
One NSW Labor MP recently observed to me that so many people are now in a dark place.
So sadly, this article comes as no surprise…..
The Daily Telegraph, 1 December 2020:
It was thrust into the national spotlight when 33 people tragically lost their lives in last year’s deadly bushfires. But the NSW south coast holds another unenviable title — the suicide capital of NSW.
In a grim reminder of the mental health battle facing our state, the area from Bateman’s Bay to the Victorian border lost 68 people to suicide between 2015 and 2019.
This is compared to the 33 lives lost to the bushfires which ravaged the region from September 2019 through to January 2020.
Analysis of Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) data reveals the south coast has a suicide rate of 21.5 per 100,000 people — the highest rate in NSW and an increase on the previous year.
Taree, Inverell, Yass and the Clarence Valley are the next worst affected. “We are seeing in the coastal regions the cumulative effects of the bushfires, social dislocation and the consequent effects of further trauma through COVID-19,” Professor Ian Hickie of the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre said. “These are the areas where there are already economic impacts, disruption and now there are additional effects. We talk about this idea of stacked distress.” The figures also reveal a yawning gap between suicide rates in the bush and Sydney, where the overwhelming majority of mental health professionals live.
Gosford and Wyong on the Central Coast are the second and third-worst areas in Greater Sydney, behind the Sydney CBD which has a suicide rate of 14.6 deaths per 100,000 people.
Yet there are 27 other rural and regional locations with a higher suicide rate. Youth mental health expert Professor Patrick McGorry said the statistics “are so shocking — it’s like a war zone”.
“There’s more than 15,500 people who have died in that five-year period (nationwide). If the cause of death were something different — like drownings or car accidents — it would be in people’s faces and on the front page,” he said.
Lifeline: 13 11 14
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By January 2019 drought affected 99.8 per cent of New South Wales and most of the state was still experiencing drought in January 2020.
The devastating 2019-20 bushfire season commenced early in regional New South Wales. The Clarence Valley fires started at the beginning of June 2019.
The COVID-19 pandemic reached New South Wales on 15 January 2020 and first appeared in the NSW Northern Rivers region on or about 16 March 2020.
In New South Wales in October 2020 unemployment stood at 6.5% and the number of people in the state who were unemployed for periods ranging from up to 4 weeks to 52 weeks and under 104 weeks rose by 148,300 individuals between October 2019 and October 2020.
By July 2020 the employment growth rate stood at 0.0% to -2.4% across the NSW Northern Rivers region.
Fire, drought, fear of infection, public health orders and economic recession significantly affected how coastal communities have lived their lives in the last two years.
According to the federal Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing:
The newly established New South Wales Suicide Monitoring System, launched by the NSW Government on 9 November 2020, reported 673 suspected suicides in NSW from 1 January to 30 September 2020. This is similar to the 672 suspected suicides reported for the same period in 2019 (NSW Ministry of Health 2020). Three-quarters of suspected suicides in 2020 were among males and more than half of all suspected suicides occurred among those aged between 25 and 55 (NSW Ministry of Health 2020).
Again, according to the same source, in New South Wales in 2018 there were a total 899 deaths registered as suicide and in 2019 at total of 937 deaths registered as suicide.
The number of registered deaths in 2019 exceeded the 22 year high of 1997 which saw 935 deaths registered as suicide.
The rate of NSW ambulance attendances for mental heath issues in 2019 was 114.3 persons per 100,000 population.
In 2018-2019 a total of 297 males and 388 females were hospitalised for self-harm on the NSW North Coast.
The rate of NSW Northern Rivers hospitalisations for self-harm by females in 2018-2019 ranged from Tweed Valley 181.5 persons per 100,000 population, Clarence Valley 128.3 persons, Richmond Valley-Hinterland 169.6 persons, and Richmond Valley-Coastal 104.2 persons. There are as yet no published figures for 2020.
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