Tag Archives: Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of Australia

Statement on marriage equality: Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of Australia – September 2017

19 Tuesday Sep 2017

Posted by in Press, Same Sex Marriage Debate, Australia 2017

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Right now the Australian Government has decided that everyone who can vote will be sent a letter asking whether they approve of ‘marriage equality’. This means that we have tick a box, either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, on whether we think people who are in same sex relationships should, by law, be allowed to marry one another, thus enjoying the same legal rights as heterosexual couples who choose to marry. It has been challenged in the High Court, but alas, the vote is continuing. The debate that has emerged is bitterly divisive and distracts from real issues such as the government’s ability to govern,climate change and, in generally the going on being of the world.

Two colleagues from the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association in Australia have drawn up a statement which was released by the Association today – 19 September 2017.

                                             The right to marry is a basic human right.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists support marriage equality 2017

Members of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of Australasia (the PPAA) are in a unique position to observe the impact of discrimination, in all its forms, and the contribution of such discrimination to a variety of mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicidality. The PPAA respect the rights of allpeople— regardless of sexual orientation, religious belief, age, gender, ability, lifestylechoice, cultural background or economic circumstances – to live with dignity and safety,and to enjoy healthy relationships in all their diversity. This position is, of course, consistent with The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/edumat/hreduseries/hereandnow/Part-5/8_udhrabbr.htm Therefore, we support marriage equality as a step toward the reduction of discrimination based on sexual orientation in Australia. PPAA Position The Council of the PPAA:  supports initiatives to remove legislative discrimination against people based on their sex, sexuality or gender identity  supports the right to marry as a basic human right  recognises the right of all LGBTIQ clients, employees, volunteers, families and communities to be free of prejudice and discrimination and to have the same rights under Australian law  believes that social inclusion is an integral aspect of a healthy society, while exclusion and discrimination contribute to increased mental health problems and unnecessary suffering  recognises that enshrining human rights in law and addressing discrimination and prejudice are essential to promoting positive mental health for all Australians
On this basis, the Council of the PPAA, on behalf of its members, supports marriage equality – the right of all Australians to access marriage with their partner of choice, irrespective of gender or sexual orientation.

Background

It has long been known, both in Australia and elsewhere, that risk of serious anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicidality is significantly increased for the LGBTIQ communities. In part, this is related to the frequently reported experience of explicit discrimination from being part of a minority group. However, both research and clinical observations indicate that the impact of institutional discrimination, wherein LGBTIQ people are excluded from participation in mainstream groups, activities and customs, plays a significant and damaging role. PPAA support marriage equality as a step toward redressing the institutional discrimination implicit in the historical exclusion from access to marriage of LGBTIQ people.

The Importance of Recognition

The PPAA recognises that discrimination in all its forms is damaging. Members of our associations in all states and New Zealand encounter the impact of discrimination against LGBTIQ individuals and communities in their daily work with patients. While it is our view that it will take generations to completely redress this deeply embedded, and often unconscious discrimination, we support any actions to remove institutional discrimination based on sexual orientation. It has long been recognised that members of LGBTIQ communities suffer an increased risk of anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicide. (1,2,3) Stonewall, a UK organisation which promotes equality for people of diverse sexual orientations, reports that “lesbian, gay and bisexual people are more likely to have experienced depression or anxiety, attempted suicide or had suicidal thoughts, and self-harmed than men and women in general” (4). For example, gay and bisexual men report moderate to severe levels of depression and anxiety at double the rate of men in general, with even higher rates of reported depression (49%) among lesbian and bisexual girls. They further report (5) that in 2012, 3% of gay men had attempted to take their own life, compared to 0.4% per cent of all men during the same period. Research from Australia (6) and elsewhere in the western world (7) is consistent with these findings. Unsurprisingly, experiences of bullying are disturbingly common in the lives of LGBTIQ members of our communities. Stonewall reported (8) that 55% of lesbian, gay and bisexual young people experience homophobic bullying in Britain’s schools. Of significance, they report a noteworthy proportion (35%) of gay young people who are not bullied still suffer high levels of depression, compared to 5% of young people generally. There is a growing body of research and clinical experience which suggests that a significant contribution to the adverse mental health impact of belonging to the LGBTIQ communities occurs via exclusion and alienation. In the research literature, this has been referred to as “minority stress” (9) a model which postulates that members of sexual and other minorities are at greater risk for health problems,
because they face greater exposure to social stress related to prejudice and stigma (10,11). Stigma-related experiences can include verbal and physical assault, social and employment discrimination, and the expectation of discrimination regardless of actual discriminatory circumstances (12,13,14). In Australia, the existence of institutional discrimination contributes to this alienation and minority stress, and we would argue, as our colleagues have done elsewhere in the world (15,16,17), that the removal of discrimination in relation to access to marriage is a crucial step to reducing the adverse impact of institutional discrimination. Implications and effects of the voluntary non-binding postal poll and the associated campaign on LGBTIQ people and their families.
We hold serious concerns about how this issue of marriage equality has been raised via a public campaign and a non-binding postal vote which unnecessarily exposes already vulnerable people to divisiveness, derision of their personal and intimate relationships with consequent emotional stress, where the deleterious effects on the mental health of many such individuals is well known.

We cannot presume to speak on behalf of all our members, but we can say that our members are concerned with the hostility, negative publicity and misleading advertising material which has arisen around the issue of marriage equality. We understand this to be damaging to people who identify as LGBTQI and their families, leaving them more vulnerable to further denigration, invalidation and ‘othering’ that they are already exposed to. With this in mind we can also say that our members are concerned to protect and nurture the well-being of children and couples of same sex unions.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of Australasia (the PPAA) PO Box 4098, Homebush South, NSW 2140 theppaa.com

The PPAA is a federated body member associations in most Australian States and New Zealand. Its members come primarily from professional backgrounds in psychology, medicine, psychiatry and social work

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The Member Associations of the PPAA are a resource for mental health support for those suffering discrimination:

New South Wales Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: nswipp.org Victorian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists: vapp.asn.au Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of Western Australia: appwa.org.au Queensland Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association: qppa.com.au

New Zealand Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: psychotherapy.co.nz

References

1. Rosenstreich, G. (2013) LGBTI People Mental Health and Suicide. Revised 2nd Edition. National LGBTI Health Alliance. Sydney

2. Mereish EH, O’Cleirigh C, Bradford JB. Interrelationships between LGBT-based victimization, suicide, and substance use problems in a diverse sample of sexual and gender minorities. Psychol Health Med. 2014;19:1–13.

3. Mays, V. M., & Cochran, S. D. (2001). Mental health correlates of perceived discrimination among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults in the United States. American Journal of Public Health, 91, 1869 – 1876.

4. Stonewall Health Briefing: Mental Heath (2012) http://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/Mental_Health_Stonewall_Health_Briefing__2012_.pdf

5. Stonewall Gay and Bisexual Men’s Health Survey (2013) http://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/Gay_and_Bisexual_Men_s_Health_Survey__2013_.pdf

6. Rosenstreich, G. (2013) LGBTI People Mental Health and Suicide. Revised 2nd Edition. National LGBTI Health Alliance. Sydney.

7. Branstrom, R, (2017) Minority stress factors as mediators of sexual orientation disparities in mental health treatment: a longitudinal population-based study. J.Epidemiol. Community Health. (Published Online 2 January 2017)

8. Stonewall School Report: The experiences of gay young people in Britain’s schools in 2012. (2012). http://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/The_School_Report 2012_.pdf

9. Meyer IH. (2003) Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence. Psych Bull. 2003; 129: 674–697.

10. Sattler FA, Wagner U, Christiansen H. (2016) Effects of minority stress, group-level coping, and social support on mental health of German gay men. PLoS ONE 11.

11. Branstrom, R, (2017) Minority stress factors as mediators of sexual orientation disparities in mental health treatment: a longitudinal population-based study. J.Epidemiol. Community Health. (Published Online 2 January 2017)

12. Akhtar, S. (2014): The mental pain of minorities, British Journal of Psychoanalysis 30:2, 136-153 14. Domenici, T., and Lesser, R. C.,

13. Domenici, T., and Lesser, R. C., 1995. Disorienting Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Reappraisals of Sexual Identities. New York: Routledge.

14. Hatzenbuehler ML, McLaughlin KA, Keyes KM, Hasin DS. (2010) The impact of institutional discrimination on psychiatric disorders in lesbian, gay, abisexual populations: A prospective study.” Am J Public Health. 100: 452– 459.

15. Buffie W C. (2011) Public Health Implications of Same-Sex Marriage. Am J Public Health.101: 986– 990.

16. Perone AK (2015) Health implications of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell vs. Hodges marriage equality decision. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Health 2, 196–199.

17. Meyer, I. (2016), The Elusive Promise of LGBT Equality. Am J Public Health. Vol 106, No. 8 Beyond Blue, 2013. LGBT People: Mental Health & Suicide. Available from: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/docs/default-source/defaultdocument-library/bw0258-lgbti-mental-health-andsuicide-2013-2ndedition.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Australian Federal Parliament, 2004. Marriage Legislation Amendment Bill 2004. Available from: https://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/library/pubs/bd/2003-04/04bd155.pdf

Relationships Australia, https://www.relationships.org.au/national/submissions…/marriage-equality-statement

 

An Anthem for Little Children

22 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conferences and Lectures

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With many thanks to Antoinette Ryan...

It is the practice of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of Australia to have its annual conference during the Queen’s Birthday Weekend in June. Because the PPAA is a federated structure, with each state having its own psychoanalytic psychotherapy association, each state takes its turn to hold the annual conference.  In recent years the preference has been for city venues. People are time poor these days. But for some years the conferences, which began in 1982, were often held in country venues around Australia. One can imagine how lovely it would have been to troop off to a winery, or to an island off Queensland, in the tropics where it is warm and sunny in contrast with the cold of the southern midwinter, for a weekend of fine dining, wining, talk and frivolity.  But in 1998 the organisers decided that St Josephs Home, a disused Catholic orphanage in Ballarat, a goldfields city in Victoria, some two hours drive from Melbourne, would be an apt venue. Why this was chosen is lost in the veils of history. The effect on conference delegates housed together for three days in a place where there were so many relics and reminders of the harsh lives of former residents, the little children who lived there, lies behind the composition of an anthem. Ostensibly it is a song for psychoanalysis. I think it is for those little children.

Ballarat, a regional city of some 86,000 people, was once the site of the first Victorian gold rush which began in 1851. Fortune seekers flocked to the diggings from Britain, America China and Europe – one of them my great grandfather in 1856. He tried his hand at digging but eventually became a policeman. He was too late for the Eureka Rebellion of 1854, a protest by the ‘diggers’ against licensing fees, whether one was successful or not, and enforced by the police. After the gold was spent Ballarat did not decline as several other towns in the region did but turned itself into a commercial government centre servicing the western districts of the state. In this corner of the British Empire grand buildings and large houses were built, schools. parks and gardens were established and the churches each staked out their hill. This small city, echoing the British life at home in the old country, also had its share of hospitals, asylums gaols and orphanages. The Ballarat Asylum built in 1877 was renamed the Ballarat Hospital for the Insane before becoming the Lakeside Mental Hospital. It was called the Lakeside Psychiatric Hospital when it closed in the 1990s.

St Josephs Home in Sebastopol Ballarat, was founded c.1911, and closed in 1980. During the last decade or more the Forgotten Australians, children who grew up in such homes, have begun to describe and document their experiences. This has culminated in two national apologies from the government. The first to the ‘Stolen Generations’, children of Aboriginal origin removed from their parents, in February 2008. The second apology, which occurred some eighteen months later in 2009, was to the ‘Forgotten Australians’, to all children who had been placed in out of home care. This came after many years of lobbying by these groups  and investigation by the relevant bodies which included the Catholic Church. The children, now adults, tell of their abandonment, and the search for a good maternal figure. Some tell of the lies they were told, that their mother was dead, to discover, years later, that their mother was alive and that her letters to them were with-held. Children remember harsh conditions in which they were forced to live. They recall the exacting  and arbitrary discipline that often disguised physical and verbal aggression. Many were sexually abused and as I write, a Royal Commission investigating child sexual abuse in institutions is traversing the country gathering evidence. In 2009 the University of Melbourne also apologised for its use of ‘orphan children’ for medical experimentation. In all these accounts the alone-ness of each child pierces one’s heart as we listen to their struggle to survive. This is not to say there were not good experiences to be had and, indeed institutional care may have provided relief from very difficult home circumstances. However the question about why the state of Victoria chose institutional care over boarding out of its state children remains. Recognition of the value of the maternal bond for the well-being of children, argued carefully by prominent author and activist, Catherine Helen Spence, in her 1907 book, State Children in Australia, was  incorporated into state children relief legislation in New South Wales and South Australia from 1871.

Members of 1998 psychotherapy conference  at the Ballarat orphanage, a live-in event in one of the coldest regions of Victoria in the depth of winter, thought a great deal about the history of these buildings and former residents. They were haunted. Too.  Were there ghosts in the room? Or did they  hear their endless cry of little children or caught glimpses of others locked in silence of despair? It was the oppressive quality of the atmosphere they remembered. There was no beauty in that place.

One of those who attended that conference was Antoinette Ryan. During her long career, beginning as a psychiatric social worker in Melbourne and Sydney, Antoinette has held various official positions in the Victorian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists, including Chair of the Membership Committee and of the House Committee, and has been a member of the VAPP Council and the Training Committee.

She retired two years ago, and now devotes her time to socializing with family and friends, painting classes, and learning the art of bonsai. Occasionally she surfs, either in Cornwall or Tasmania. She has written short stories, and was a potter for some twenty years.

‘It was a terrible place’, she said of the Boys’ Home. “We were haunted by ghosts of the place; we all felt spooked. It was terribly oppressive.’ She wanted to find a way to respond, to counter the deadly sense of emotional deprivation about her. And so an anthem was created.

Here are the words of the anthem, published here with Antoinette’s permission. It is to be sung to the tune of ‘Jerusalem’ with apologies to William Blake and acknowledging the composer Hubert Parry, who composed it in 1916 as an anthem to a nation in the depth of the Great War. It was subsequently appropriated by the suffragettes, with Parry’s permission, and first sung by a massed women choir at the Royal Albert Hall at a suffrage rally in 1918 as an anthem for freedom from oppression

‘Jerusalem’ is an apt choice of melody and sentiment. It urges reclamation of mind and soul. It is a protest against oppression as it urges us to fight for our lives as the little children had to do. The date of composition for Antoinette’s piece was 7 June 1998. It was revised on 10 June 2007. Here it is. You can sing it if you like!

PPAA Anthem

So here we are, as Winter comes,
Gathered to meet and share concerns.’
So we are here, we meet again,
From distant corners of our lands.
 

And do we dare to hope for more?
For therapy to grow in depth?
Till be defeat despair, beat despair,
And foil destruction’s grasping hands.
 

Bring us our chair, our couch of pain,
Save us from mem’ry and desire,
Bring us our Freud, our Jung, our Klein,
For highest standards we aspire…
 

We will not hold with mental flight,
Nor let our inner hearts be blind
Till we have traced the threads, faced the dreads,
And fortified our thinking minds.
 

If you would like to be reminded of the original ‘Jerusalem here it is.