Submission 88 — Stress Management Institute — The provision of services under the NDIS for people with psychosocial disabilities related to a mental health condition | External submission

Submission to

The Joint Standing

Committee on the

NDIS – Mental Health

February, 2017

Stress Management Institute Pty Ltd ABN 31 600 080 288 www.stressmanagementinstitute.org PO Box 4125, Forest Lake, QLD, 4078 Australia (+61) 1300 663 979

Introduction

The Stress Management Institute (SMI) thanks the Senate Standing Community Affairs

Committee for the invitation to make a submission to the inquiry into the provision of services under the NDIS for people with psychosocial disabilities related to a mental health condition.

Our submission provides a low cost and easily serviced and delivered mode of care with the potential to impact on the NDIS on the mental health of the general workforce and people filling roles as carers as well as homemakers who are experiencing major family problems. These can be associated with domestic violence and other psychosocial disabilities related to mental health of large numbers of affected people.

Executive Summary

SMI is a relative new organisation being active in the marketplace in Australia since the first half of 2014. The Institute was established to fill a huge gap in the marketplace to provide training programs for individuals on how to deal with the debilitating effects of stress.

Using specific tools and strategies you can often harness ‘bad stress’, and change it, to create ‘good stress’ that can enhance life and health. Lifeline National Annual Stress Polls over the past decade have identified 90% of the population are suffering from secondary stress. We call these people the ‘worried well’ and ‘working wounded’ and they need care, which is generally neglected as they have not yet entered the arena of tertiary stress which is where individuals become ‘broken’. This area of tertiary stress is very debilitating for the affected individuals and it has been estimated to cost the economy more than $30 billion annually as identified in research conducted by Safe Work Australia.

SMI welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback to the committee on the provision of services under the NDIS for people with psychosocial disabilities related to a mental health condition. We look forward to the national implementation of the NDIS, and we hope that the NDIS will mean all people with a stress related disability can live a much fuller and healthier life.

Background

Stress is a very serious problem affecting people’s mental health, physical health, relationships and work performance. It is thus vital for Australia to stay informed about stress trends and to proactively seek means for supporting communities in managing stress.

Many people are often unaware of the factors causing their stress or the options available to manage stress levels and thus suffer through for many years before seeking help.

Typically, in Australia help is sought from a General Practitioner who will prescribe medicinal and chemical treatments which treat the symptom rather than the cause of the stress and is expensive for individuals and families. A major problem with this approach is the iatrogenic outcomes from medication which cause side effects and subsequently additional health problems. Non-traditional help sought through community support infrastructures such as faith-based, social and recreational organisations is often ineffective as these institutions are inadequately skilled or equipped to offer holistic solutions to the many complex forces causing stress and wellbeing issues.

Tools and strategies that work and are low cost to deliver, include emotional resilience skills and mindfulness tools to support the Australian community via public and business seminars as well as personal mentoring and coaching. This new approach is not hardware or software in nature, but rather “people-ware”, with the focus based not only on new emerging evidence from the biological sciences, but also backed by field experience and wisdom which is process driven. Teaching affected people simple, sustainable self-care tools and strategies to use in their personal, family, business, government or corporate lives is a key.

These highly effective tools and strategies are easy to coach, and easy for anybody to learn and in turn accommodate into their daily schedule.

Channeling stress into a positive energy can radically improve performance and creativity, making people brighter and quicker. Stress is a kind of energy that we can harness.

This new concept and practice has been outside the parameters of thinking until now. Stress has long been demonised, blaming it for causing chronic anxiety, which in turn is responsible for everything from obesity to cancer and even premature ageing.

Most psychologists encourage people to chase happiness, and steer clear of too much pressure. However, stress is important for achievement and it is possible to hack the brain and hijack the fight or flight hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, before they cause problems.

In our experience, there is no clear pathway to the introduction of the NDIS funding models for individuals and marginalised sections of consumers, nor certainty for the health practitioner workforce.

People with intellectual and psychosocial disability will be eligible for NDIS, however they may have trouble in obtaining support if they are socially isolated, homeless or have limited advocacy. The often-unstable lifestyle of these people may preclude them from accessing individual NDIS packages. We support proactive outreach to link people with intellectual and psychosocial disability with NDIS packages and more accessible mental health programs.

Conclusion

We recognise there may be other aspects of the NDIS rollout that are currently unknown, and these may impact on mental health practitioners in the future, and ask the Committee to view this submission considering those possibilities.

Submitted by

John Hinwood DC, DPE, Cert IV SMP, Cert IV T & A, Cert LC, FACC, FICC, FAIS, FAIM

Director, Stress Management Institute

27 February 2017