But when you look at how we have designed our insurance products, it’s TPD – so it’s got to be total and permanent, and episodic doesn’t seem to fit those definitions all that well. So maybe income protection is a bigger part of it. But also the rehabilitation is going to be a key part of it. What’s your views on whether Australia is set up to rehabilitate people sufficiently? John Mendoza: What the DSP has done for people who have been granted that pension for psychiatric disabilities is put them in a holding pattern, it doesn’t actually try and move them back into participation in the workplace, it just simply gives them a slightly below the poverty line pension and allows them to exist. Damian’s point about the industry’s product arrangements and recognising the episodic nature of mental illness do need to be thought about. TPD, I think, for psychiatric disability is a bad product. It’s not necessary for the vast bulk of mental health conditions.

There will be a few people who are so seriously impaired they cannot participate in the workplace, 40-50,000 in Australia. But there are hundreds of thousands that experience mental health problems each year that need a short time out of work, need effective treatment and can get back into work. The industry has to have a really good hard look at how its product offerings are responding to the evidence now around work participation for people with mental illness. Lisa Munsie: John, do you think there is a danger in labeling somebody totally and permanently disabled? John Mendoza: Oh yes. John Mok: Just on a return to work perspective, I think the insurers find it a lot easier to encourage members to go back to work when they’re claiming income protection, rather than TPD. With TPD, the interests are not aligned. After waiting for six months for their waiting period, there’s always a long delayed claim assessment process as we see here.

Most members are only concerned about getting the payment as soon as they can, whereas for income protection they really just genuinely say, well I’m temporarily disabled, I need an income protection benefit to support my current needs, but we find a lot of the time they are quite keen to participate in a rehab program that we propose to them. So we do find income protection a lot easier to work with in encouraging them to go back to work. Lisa Munsie: That’s right, the products certainly complement each other I think. If somebody’s putting in a claim for TPD and they don’t have income protection as an option. they’re hardly about to say, hey yep, sign me up for the next rehab program, because it defeats the purpose of claiming TPD in the first place. John Mendoza: The industry needs to think about, say, someone who gets a diagnosis of bipolar – the prognosis is they might have short cycle bipolar so they might every three months go through a full cycle. But that’s uncommon, more likely a couple of times a year they’ll have a depressive episode which will make work impossible for a period of up to six weeks.