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Melbourne’s Indigenous people in grips of mental health crisis
It’s a wet Wednesday morning in Thomastown and all the patients Dr Peter Walsh has seen so far have severe mental health problems. One is suicidal, another is experiencing drug-induced psychosis.
- Miki Perkins
- The Age
It’s not unusual for most – sometimes all – of the patients in a day at this new Aboriginal health service to be in the midst of a full-blown, severe mental health crisis.
The clinic’s Melbourne-based patients experience trauma and mental health conditions more often and more severely than remote Indigenous Australians, Dr Walsh says.
“There’s a preconceived…