Fragmentation in Australian Commonwealth and South Australian State policy on mental health and older people: A governmentality analysis
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Date
2016
Authors
Oster, Candice
Henderson, Julie Anne
Lawn, Sharon Joy
Reed, Richard Lewis
Dawson, Suzanne
Muir-Cochrane, Eimear Caitlin
Fuller, Jeffrey
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Rights
Copyright 2016 The Authors
Rights Holder
The Authors
Abstract
Mental health care for older people is a significant and growing issue in Australia and
internationally. This article describes how older people’s mental health is governed
through policy discourse by examining Australian Commonwealth and South
Australian State government policy documents, and commentaries from professional
groups, advocacy groups and non-governmental organisations. Documents published
between 2009 and 2014 were analysed using a governmentality approach, informed
by Foucault. Discourses of ‘risk’, ‘ageing as decline/dependence’ and ‘healthy ageing’
were identified. Through these discourses, different neo-liberal governmental
strategies are applied to ‘target’ groups according to varying risk judgements. Three
policy approaches were identified where older people are (1) absent from policy,
(2) governed as responsible, active citizens or (3) governed as passive recipients of
health care. This fragmented policy response to older people’s mental health reflects
fragmentation in the Australian policy environment. It constructs an ambiguous place
for older people within neo-liberal governmental rationality, with significant effects on
the health system, older people and their carers.
Description
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Keywords
Citation
Oster C, Henderson J, Lawn S, Reed R, Dawson S, Muir-Cochrane E, Fuller J. Fragmentation in Australian Commonwealth and South Australian State policy on mental health and older people: A governmentality analysis. Health (London). 2016 May 4. pii: 1363459316644490.