Barriers to recovery : the impact of disability social security reform on the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians living with mental health conditions

This chapter describes the significant impacts on the day-to-day lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians living with a mental health condition when seeking access to Australia’s primary disability social security payment, the Disability Support Pension. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with 21 representatives from medical, mental health, legal, employment and non-government services from across four regional Australian towns, this chapter illustrates the significant hardship that stringent disability assessment regimes have on the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians living with a mental health condition. Services reported that individuals living with fluctuating mental health conditions were particularly disadvantaged. Service workers identified two core areas that generate forms of hardship for disability social security applicants: (1) barriers to accessing medical and mental health treatment to comply with the new assessment process, and (2) health of the applicants during the application process. This chapter argues that the ongoing structural barriers to a tightened and restricted disability social security system, as demonstrated by the changes the Australian Government has made to the eligibility criteria, deny individuals access to adequate social protection and have a severe impact on individuals living with a mental health condition.