Home » Coverage of Steven Schwartz’s paper, Blaise Joseph’s views on childcare, and more
NDIS Costs Surging Due to Overdiagnosis of Mental Health, Autism: Report — Epoch Times
Forty percent of all NDIS participants have a primary diagnosis of autism, according to the Centre for Independent Studies.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) risks becoming unaffordable due to the rising cost burden of mental health conditions such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
That’s according to a report from the Centre for Independent Studies, which recommends evaluating outcomes to better measure the system’s efficiency.
“Support programs such as the Better Access initiative and the National Disability Insurance Scheme have dramatically expanded access to therapy, medication, and support. Yet, for all this investment, the nation’s mental health has conspicuously failed to improve.
“Suicide rates have barely budged. Psychiatric drug use is at record levels. And each year, the number of Australians classified as mentally ill continues to rise,” says the report, titled “Drowning in a Sea of Diagnoses” and written by Emeritus Professor Steven Schwartz.
Autism, for instance, costs the NDIS more than $10 billion of its $48.5 billion annual budget, and now accounts for 43 percent of the total number of people supported through the scheme.
A record 62,500 people diagnosed with autism were added last year—a rate of growth that is fiscally unsustainable, Schwartz argues.
He compares the situation to reported cases of repetitive strain injury (RSI) that peaked in the 1980s and then virtually disappeared.
“When diagnosis became a pathway to validation and compensation, case numbers rose sharply. When those incentives changed, the epidemic faded,” he notes. “A similar trend is now evident in mental health.”
An interconnected network of people and entities depends on a steady supply of cases, Schwartz argues.
This includes clinicians who must operate within funding frameworks to allow their patients access to help; schools, universities, and employers who rely on diagnoses to justify special consideration; pharmaceutical companies that profit from treatment; and governments that respond with more programs, inquiries, and spending.
Or, as Schwartz puts it in an accompanying essay, “diagnosis has become the gateway to incentives.”
“Together, these various actors form a diagnostic-industrial-government complex: a self-reinforcing system in which each participant depends on diagnostic expansion to justify their role,” he explains.
Schwartz is careful not to minimise genuine suffering, noting that “eating disorders can be fatal. Depression can destroy relationships and lead to self-harm. Severe psychotic disorders can require lifelong support.
“The issue is not whether people suffer, but whether medicalising their suffering has helped them to recover and live better lives.” (More…)
UTS scraps early entry scheme — Honi Soit
A 2023 report by the Centre for Independent Studies found that the proportion of high school leavers admitted to university was at 25 percent in 2023, an increase from 15 per cent in 2016. Of the 2023 data, 14 per cent used their ATAR in conjunction with non-ATAR criteria.
The report stated that “Despite rhetoric around non-ATAR pathways being ‘fairer’ or more ‘equitable’, in practice universities appear to be using this method as an opaque way to admit low-ATAR students, without commensurate increases in support needed to complete their degrees.”
How many hours of childcare is best for kids, and how much is too much? — across Fairfax
Blaise Joseph, director of the education program at conservative think tank The Centre for Independent Studies, said while research was consistently positive about preschool, this report showed the benefits of formal childcare were not uniform for all children of all ages and backgrounds.
“Given the lack of a consistent educational benefit of formal childcare, the growing cost to both parents and taxpayers, and the fact that formal childcare simply doesn’t work for many parents, we really should be open to alternative policy options that might better support children in informal care too,” he said.
Coverage of Steven Schwartz’s paper, Blaise Joseph’s views on childcare, and more