The case for re-opening the hospital at Callan Park
This is the text of some remarks made by Greens’ Councillor Daniel Kogoy at the Callan Park Taskforce meeting on March 23. We have reprinted them because of their relevance and humanity. It is also worth recalling that on two occasions last year - in September and October - Barry O’Farrell promised to re-open the hospital if the Opposition won the next state election.
I’m going to talk about Callan Park in relation to Rozelle Hospital, criticisms levelled against the hospital and the failings of the policy of reducing bed numbers, often referred to as de-institutionalisation.
Callan Park was and remains an ideal location for a contemporary psychiatric hospital. A re-opened Rozelle Hospital would go a long way to addressing the drastic shortage of acute beds, community care and supported housing in NSW for people with a mental illness.
Not so long ago, in 1988, the hospital had 600 beds covering acute inpatient services, special units for the treatment of alcoholics and psycho-geriatrics, and a comprehensive rehabilitation programme for chronically ill patients. All units of the hospital had close links with community health centres. Of course, since then both hospital and community health services have been run down to the point that NSW Health can claim that in opening 174 beds at Concord Hospital all previous services at Rozelle have been transferred to Concord.
The criticisms that have been levelled at Rozelle Hospital have been of its core function. That core function being the treatment and facilitation of recovery from mental illness. When a hospital is denigrated in such a way, so too are it’s hardworking nurses, doctors, former patients and their carers.
Critics of Rozelle Hospital use words such as ‘institution’, ‘old asylums’ and ‘lock away patients’ to tarnish its outstanding contribution to the community. Criticisms include that Rozelle Hospital was similar to a jail. The ironic reality of deinstitutionalisation has been the re-institutionalisation of many of the mentally ill in the prison system. In the past two decades NSW’s prison population has almost tripled. While the State Government was closing Rozelle, it was busy opening a forensic hospital in the Long Bay complex. Our jails are the new psychiatric hospitals.
Those who advocated for the closure of Rozelle Hospital argued that the ‘mainstreaming’ of mental health hospitals into general hospitals reflects best practice. However, there are no fewer than eight stand-alone private psychiatric hospitals operating in Sydney and 22 across Australia. I am yet to hear such criticisms directed at these standalone facilities.
Some argue that Rozelle Hospital stigmatized mental illness. If anything, a purpose-built mental health hospital situated on a rare and beautiful piece of public land reduced the stigma attached to mental illness. By designating such a space to be shared by those suffering from mental illness and the wider community, the message conveyed was of acceptance and integration within the community. Much more so than the current reality of living on the streets or in jail.
What is stigmatising is society’s perception of the mentally ill. This must be addressed through increased education and awareness throughout the community, not through the closure of mental health hospitals.
According to an article by Saul Feldman that appeared in the Hastings Centre Report the same year of the Richmond Report called Out of the Hospital, onto the Streets, such criticisms are part of ‘the role played by mental health administrators and those who control resources and make policy in the process of deinstitutionalization…’
It refers to the process by which ‘At times by innuendo, but also quite openly, community mental health centres were cast as the heroes who would liberate the forlorn and hopeless victims from the clutches of the villainous state hospitals … Hospitals would close, the number of patients would decline sharply, humane care would prevail…’ We now know what the reality is.
A reopened Rozelle Hospital and supported housing at Callan Park would not solve all the problems associated with mental illness. However, it would give sufferers improved services, increased dignity and a better chance of recovery. A reopened Rozelle Hospital would contribute to a reduction in the number of mentally ill in prison, living on the streets or dead and it would lesson the burden on the family, who so often have been responsible for the ‘community care’ of mentally ill family members.