The world turned upside down?
This past week gave a stark reminder of what’s important in life, and what is not.
My 16 year old spent the week in hospital. A gentle soul navigating a hard world, impacted by teenage trauma, exhausted by ongoing bullying and social isolation, she collapsed in a heap on Monday. Luckily, she found herself in the arms of a school psychologist who recognised that this was not a ‘dust yourself off’ moment but deeper care was required. This exposed us to the extremes of wonderful medical staff and the systemic inequity of using health provision as a profit making exercise.
The week ended with us all buried in a landslide of emails. 50% of something you don’t need, get a great deal on some plastic crap and get a second half price. Black Friday isn’t even a real thing, it has no cultural roots, it is simply a brazen, consumerist money grab. It is just an insidious capitalist shit-show, exported by the US to the rest of the world to addict us all to a life of quick dopamine hits and waste.
Rant over (for now), back to my observations of the NSW health care.
Firstly, public/private, the staff are overworked, underpaid but incredibly dedicated and caring. At some point in our lives (often the lowest point) we will need them and they will give their all in difficult circumstances. The system however is stretched (by a mix of misplaced prioritisation of public funding and private greed). Eg. It took 9 hours to see a frazzled mental health nurse in ED (who then received 3 phone calls in the 30 minutes she was with my daughter). When corporate bonuses are traded off against staff numbers in hospital, against decent wages, against wait times and bed numbers, real people suffer.
What we also so was that care, empathy and dedication are innate human traits. Health care in NSW is a wonderfully international experience – a psychologist from Peru, a mental health clinical nurse consultant from West Africa (with the most wonderful hair we’d ever seen), nurses and orderlies from every corner of the planet.
So enough with all the racist BS, immigrants are the heart of our health system and add massive value to our country. You have the right disagree with me on this, just don’t ever get sick…
The system is also deeply inequitable. Due to the legacy of an expensive private health fund (which we kept ‘for a rainy day’), we are lucky enough to be able to tap in to a level of care that many others will not. The kind of support that would quickly bankrupt us without private health care. The extremes of US health care thankfully are not replicated here, but we should not kid ourselves that we can all access the help needed. Our family are privileged, those in remote areas, in poorer demographics, in minority groups simply would not receive the same level of care. It’s not by accident that private health options are located in the more affluent areas of the country.
What we also encountered was the heartbreaking level of mental illness in society (especially across our younger people). I cannot imagine the accumulated stress of stumbling through your teens living life under a constant microscope of social media judgement. Add in the fraught nature of these liminal times plus the socially disconnected lives many lead and it’s a wonder any of our kids survive to adulthood in tact. While this is obviously multi-factorial, my generation were asleep at the wheel when it came to entrusting our digital adoption to tech bros (definitely worth its own blog).
It’s often said that mental health problems are invisible, but after a week in and out of wards and clinics, you tune in to a few telltale signs. I can see the shell-shocked vulnerability of PTSD in my daughter’s eyes, you can spot the agitated movements of the anxious person, the lethargy of someone in a deeply depressed state, the more obvious feeding tubes of the group with eating disorders, the regular patterns of scar tissue of the kid self-harming to feel something/anything.
We are suffering through a mental health crisis – the data backs this up. We really should be doing everything within our power to prevent this at source – but that would require deep systemic change, so we focus on the symptoms (if you are on the lucky side of the ledger). What happens when vulnerable, socially isolated kids don’t get the help required, well the statistics on suicide tell that awful story… When we look at all the money flowing around our economy, we should ask if it’s a more valuable use than creating the conditions for a healthy population. What is the point of any economic activity if it doesn’t promote wellbeing?
So, apologies for the late and rambling stream of consciousness, it reflects my state after an exhausting and emotionally fraught week. I’ll aim for a big finish to redeem this offering.
All the best things in life aren’t free, but they bloody well should be. The commoditisation of our basic needs is the mark of a world in crisis. People should never be placed in a position of having to forego one basic necessity for another, yet this is the world we accept. As the capitalist experiment collapses (under the weight of its own greed), we need to consider what is important for a good life – then build an economy around universal access to these essentials.
Family is important, social connection is important, health is important, that landfill you bought on Black Friday, is not…
Stay healthy, look after each other
Ewan
