From the Illawarra to the Far South Coast, families have known that police and paramedics have been forced to act as the ‘Rural Fire Service’ of a tragic mental health crisis.

Regional areas are chronically underfunded and under resourced when it comes to caring for people with mental illnesses.

Twenty five years ago, an Illawarra leading psychiatrist told me the statistics showed a person with a mental illness who happened to live on Sydney’s North Shore would have roughly five times the resources available to someone in a regional area.

The balance may have tipped to some degree in larger regional centres, but rural areas on the Far South Coast still lag tragically behind.

There is no residential mental health facility for Eurobodalla or other Far South Coast patients – a fact parents, carers, patients and community-based groups have spoken out about for too long.

In the absence of adequate mental health facilties, police are forced to become de facto psychiatric nurses and police stations and jails becomes de facto hospitals.

That is a system that does not work for anyone.

Mr Knox told Bay Post/Moruya Examiner reporter Emily Barton on Wednesday of a scenario that has been played out many times in regional areas.

“This is just from my experience, but a classic example is elderly parents who are trying to control a 30-year-old schizophrenic male child who has lots of episodes,” Mr Knox said.

“It gets violent and there is no psychiatric help for them. The parents are terrified and have to call the police. 

“The police aren’t mental health workers and the parents are put in the horrible situation of knowing if they call the police, their child will go to jail.”

Up and down the South and Far South Coasts this morning, too many parents and partners know too well the cost of this scenario.

Solicitors do not often spit the dummy as publicly as Mr Knox has – we are glad he did and hope the federal government’s recently announced reforms to mental health delivery will finally deliver results.