Minister talks about meth solutions

Mental health issues are not simple and involve a deeper investment, those are the words of State Mental Health Minister Andrea Mitchell.

Ms Mitchell spoke at a methamphetamine forum in Bunbury today about how the Government is planning to tackle the drug problems in the community.

She said it was important for help to be available when someone reached out for support.

“Trying to map the services has been a lot harder than what I thought it would be, but we are still working on it,” she said.

“In a crisis point or a critical time it doesn’t happen between nine and five, so it needs to be when people say they need help.

“Don’t think that there has to be everything in your patch because some people don’t want that.”

She said when recovering addicts returned to their home town, the first people they contacted were old friends with old habits, so support needed to be available to stop them relapsing.

Ms Mitchell congratulated what Bunbury mothers Lina Pugh and Julie Kent were doing to set up a support centre for drug rehabilitation in Bunbury.

Mrs Pugh said when she first found out her son Taylor was addicted to methamphetamine she “buried her head in the sand”.

“You tend not to look outside your own window to find help because you are hoping it will go away,” she said.

“My son was using large amounts on a daily basis and his lifestyle was creating such a huge impact on me and my own family that it was destructive and it was about to become a lot more destructive because of his illness.

“In February this year he lay in a hospital bed and me and my family were absolutely devastated that this may be the last time we see him, for us it was lucky that he survived.”

She described her experience searching for help as “a maze of different things which can be done that eventually ended up in nothing”.

This was the catalyst for starting the support group, Doors Wide Open where they are able to identify the families and addicts having problems and provide immediate help.

She said they did not pretend to be a counselling or clinical service but a bridge for help between services.