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This paper estimates the wellbeing effects of the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires, the deadliest wildfire event in Australia's known history. Using subjective wellbeing data from a nationally representative longitudinal study and adopting an individual fixed-effects approach, our results identify a significant reduction in life satisfaction for individuals residing in close proximity of the wildfires. The negative wellbeing effect is valued at A$52,300. This corresponds to 80% of the average annual income of a full-time employed adult in the state of Victoria. The satisfaction domain most negatively affected is how safe the person feels, and the group most affected are people with low social support. A delayed adverse mental health effect is also identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a multi-year Australian collaborative study of mental health review tribunals (‘MHTs’) in three jurisdictions (Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory) undertaken in conjunction with the NSW Law and Justice Foundation, using qualitative and quantitative methods to examine the role of MHTs in advancing goals such as fairness, legality and access to treatment. Study findings regarding stakeholder and client concerns – about access to quality treatment and associated support services, review of treatment adequacy and drug regimes, and their ‘participation’ or dignity of engagement in review processes – are presented as variants of the need for adequate hearing ‘space’: temporal, jurisdictional, cognate/relational, physical and symbolic, and ‘connective’. Building on earlier arguments for MHTs to engage not only legal, but also clinical and social domains, and for adopting some processes more characteristic of case-conferencing, this paper examines the implications of tribunal ‘flexibility’ and a wider overall ‘governance’ jurisdiction in mental health. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Many countries embarked on reforms of mental health law in the wake of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. These reforms have had varying levels of success. This paper considers the experience of consumers in the Victorian mental health system, drawing on an evaluation that asked consumers and clinicians about their knowledge and experience of rights under the Victorian Mental Health Act, 2014. The data show that consumers were not informed of their rights, were not involved in decisions about treatment, were not able to access safeguards, and could not exercise their rights. The explanations for this include limited staff time, unclear delegations of responsibility, a lack of knowledge, training, and support for rights, and a preference for 'best interests' approaches. The paper identifies tangible reforms that would maintain rights for consumers, including competent refusal of treatment, legislative and regulatory reforms, and training and resourcing. Consumers in this study found that the rights-based framework in the Mental Health Act, 2014 had such an insignificant effect on clinical mental health practice in Victoria that their rights appeared to be illusory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]