Mental health organisations in Australia are groaning under the latest wave of stress and anxiety triggered by COVID-19, a surge which was already compounded by the recent bushfires and drought.
Beyond Blue reported an all-time high in activity on its online forums with its "Coping during the coronavirus outbreak" chatroom attracting seven times the amount of conversation than its bushfire forum did earlier this year.Andrew Robb!! The depressed politician who arose from his sickbed especially to defeat Malcolm Turnbull because he didn't like his support of climate change action?? I do not trust this man's judgement, to put it mildly.
While Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt last week established coronavirus mental wellbeing support services, including a new digital and phone support services, a former colleague of his was pushing for medicinal use of psychedelics.
Former Coalition MP Andrew Robb, now a board member of Mind Medicine Australia (MMA), is driving a fresh campaign to introduce drugs such as MDMA and psilocybin — found in magic mushrooms — as a treatment option.
Back to the story:
The not-for-profit, which aims to "establish safe and effective psychedelics treatments", is urging the Government to establish a mental health taskforce for COVID-19 and wants these treatments to be on the table when it happens.Yeah, yeah.
Mr Robb did not advocate for it to be used recreationally, but said psychedelic-assisted therapy should be available as a medical treatment in the same way cannabis is.
What I would like politicians and commentators to stop doing is talking about how likely it is that people will be getting depressed and suicidal due to social isolation. It carries with it too much of a touch of self fulfilling prophecy about it...