In terms of the call centre, the teleclaims interview does predominantly go through professional or experienced claims assessors – we would not want these sorts of claims going through a call centre that doesn’t understand the process, because we need to reduce the number of touch points. And we need to be able to have the information on hand for these people. Colin Tate: I noticed John Mendoza shaking his head at the notion of more than one touch point. Why do you feel so strongly that the one point is critical? John Mendoza: It’s all about the quality of the relationship. And trust. Trust is paramount when dealing with people with mental illness. Partly due to the stigma issues, but also you’ve got to understand they often interpret things in very negative ways. So it’s no exaggeration that many people with mental illnesses like anxiety disorders and depression will put a negative prism on anything that’s coming to them.

Feelings of paranoia, of being stigmatised, self stigma, that all plays into that so there’s no question that the quality of the relationship, if its managed well and it’s a single point of contact or as few as possible will be in everybody’s interest. Amalia Faba: That’s absolutely our experience so far regardless of what role you’re playing, whether you are just the administrator or acting as the liaison point. The other part of that is from time to time, if mental illness was a primary cause of illness, we have needed to work with the case manager. And that has been quite successful as well, being able to get access there makes life a lot easier. Sean Scallan: I think that leads pretty well into John Mendoza’s discussion. He’s chair of Superfriend’s Mental Health Reference Group, chair of the National Advisory Council on Mental Health, and he’ll discuss the differences between mental health claims and physical injury claims.

John Mendoza: I’m not a claims expert in any way, shape or form. But I guess I drew on thinking about today the evidence that I’m familiar with in terms of attracting and retaining people with mental illness in the workplace has some relevance here. The Howard government’s ‘welfare to work’ reforms didn’t work very well for people with psychiatric disability, who make up about a third of those that are on the Commonwealth Government’s disability support program (DSP). If you look at welfare stats for Australia over the last two decades, we’ve been consistently bringing down our unemployment rate, but what we haven’t been good at is keeping a lid on the growth in disability support payments… The lesson that’s very clear, in the international evidence in trying to place people with a psychiatric disability into work, is the sooner that service can be provided in the workplace, in situ, in the workplace the better the outcome. With most employment support programs run by governments around the world, what they concentrate on is pre-employment preparation. So preparing someone for placement into work.