Living With Dryness?
A new report by Charles Sturt University says that drought is seriously affecting the mental health and educational prospects of children across the Murray-Darling Basin.
One of the worst-affected areas is Coorong Shire at the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia, where increased anxiety and withdrawn behaviour among schoolchildren are being traced to family depression and stress at home.
Aboriginal children in the region are suffering from diseases related to lack of water and poor water quality, and the risk of Ross River fever has increased,
Farm incomes in the NSW eastern Riverina have more than halved in the past seven years, with one farmer telling the Charles Sturt research team the drought had ”brought relentless financial indignities”. Food and petrol prices in remote rural areas are up to 20 per cent higher than in big cities, with unemployment levels 7 per cent above the national average.
Key findings of the report include:
• Increased workloads for farm families because of inability to afford paid labor, with children co-opted from school to help out.
• More farmers taking fly-out jobs in mines and gas fields, leaving their wives to run the farms.
• School and bus route closures forcing children to travel further.
• A heightened risk of mental illness, with rural men making 42 per cent of all calls by males to Lifeline seeking help for depression.
• A doubling in the number of people accessing counselling services in some areas.
• Debt forcing one in five families in some areas to sell personal possessions, with 67 per cent saying their financial position had worsened in the past three years.
Professor Alston’s report is stark contrast to a second report issued yesterday, by federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke, on the social impact of drought which claims the word ”drought” is too depressing and has called for a ”new national approach to living with dryness, as we prefer to call it”.
Perhaps Burke is right about us needing to learn to live with “dryness” BUT let’s not forget the plight of those who are living with it more than others. When the most resilient people in our country are pushed to breaking point I think they need our support.
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