Christine Yerbury would like to move somewhere without stairs
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
10 hours ago
- ABC News
Tasmanian Labor officially launches election campaign week before snap poll
The Tasmanian Labor Party has pledged to double the number of free GP clinics it will open, if elected into government at next weekend's snap poll. The party had previously proposed creating five government-run GP clinics in health hubs around the state, in a move inspired by the federal and state governments' Urgent Care Clinics. Under the TassieDoc plan, the state government would pay nursing and admin staff as well as provide the clinic and consulting rooms. The clinics are also intended to operate with extended hours, including weekends. The initial pledge was matched by the Tasmanian Liberal Party — but on Sunday, at Labor's official campaign launch in Devonport, party leader Dean Winter announced it was bumping up its promise to 10 clinics. He said he had been "stunned" by reception to the TassieDoc plan. "Doctors calling us saying they want to get involved, Tasmanians begging us to put them in their communities. "We'll make sure that Tasmanians can access free doctor appointments no matter where they live." The party has previously identified Ravenswood, Burnie, Devonport, Glenorchy and Risdon Vale as the locations for the first five clinics. During the campaign launch, Mr Winter also pledged to introduce legislation to ensure GP contractors do not have to pay payroll tax permanently, and introduce an exemption for GP registrars. '"Labor will also establish an ongoing State-Federal Tasmanian doctor recruitment task force to continue to train and retain doctors in Tasmania," he said. Having flown in to support the campaign launch, Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers threw his support behind the state Labor leader. "The Liberal waste, the overruns and the blowouts are costing Tasmanians dearly," Mr Chalmers said. "This is the Liberal legacy laid bare." The Tasmanian branch of the Australian Medical Association said it welcomed the investment — but that staffing challenges could not be ignored. "We're already short of GPs in Tasmania," vice-president Meg Creely said. "So while we welcome the investment in primary care and the recognition that it's such a vital part of our entire healthcare world here in Tassie, we've got to work out how we attract the doctors to work there." Dr Creely said things like the task force put forward by Labor sounded "positive" for the short-term recruitment of doctors. But, she said it was important retention was also in focus — and that the clinics did not impact on existing practices. When it first announced the clinics, Labor said it would spend $5 million fitting out the five clinics, then $4 million a year to keep them running, and $2 million towards incentives for GPs to work at them. Liberal health spokesperson Jacquie Petrusma described Labor's announcement as a "last-ditch campaign con". "The Liberal Government backs establishing sustainable GP clinics in areas of need that are able to be supported and staffed," she said. "We have generous settlement allowances and settlements on the table, and our viability grants to strengthen practices across the state are working." Ms Petrusma said GPs who contract a clinical space were already exempt from payroll tax. A Liberal spokesperson said the party would not be matching the TassieDoc expansion pledge. Tasmanians will head to the polls on July 19.
ABC News
20 hours ago
- ABC News
What is kleptomania? Understanding the compulsive urge to steal
Lynn* can remember the very first time she stole something. A kid's toy from a friend when she was seven years old. It was nothing out of the ordinary — young kids often steal and tend to grow out of it. But as she got older, Lynn found herself stealing more often. She'd take hair ties from her teacher's desk, umbrellas from her university, a small doll from the shops. And at 22, the urge to steal has taken over Lynn's life. "Almost everywhere I go right now I have to steal something, which is really disabling for me," she says. Two years ago, Lynn was officially diagnosed with kleptomania — a mental health condition characterised by a compulsive urge to steal. Kleptomania is considered an "impulse control disorder" under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a clinician's key handbook for mental health conditions. Impulse control disorders are a relatively rare cluster of conditions that also includes pyromania (an intense fascination with fire and the repeated, deliberate setting of fires) and oppositional defiant disorder (a pattern of disobedient or hostile behaviour towards authority figures in childhood). People with kleptomania repeatedly steal items, but they do it impulsively and they find it very difficult to stop," says Sam Chamberlain, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Southampton. "Importantly, when they steal these items, it's not because they need them and it's not for personal or financial gain," he says. According to Dr Chamberlain, the typical pattern of behaviour for someone with kleptomania is a sense of tension that builds up before the theft, followed by a feeling of gratification or release after they've done it. Lynn says the urges feel like she is being pulled towards a particular object — that "it feels like there's no way of not taking it." She says it feels reflexive and difficult to suppress, like a sneeze or a yawn. And once she's taken the object, there's a rush of euphoria, quickly followed by guilt. "After a minute already I feel so very guilty about it. And I feel like a terrible human being," she says. Despite being mentioned in medical manuscripts for hundreds of years, kleptomania is still not well understood. "It's really stigmatised and hidden," Dr Chamberlain says. "And this means, sadly, that the person with a condition will suffer more. "It also makes this condition hard to study because people might be reluctant to come forward for research and admit that they've got this condition," he adds. The evidence we do have suggests about three to six in every 1,000 people have kleptomania. That makes it much rarer than conditions like anxiety and depression, which affect sizeable proportions of the population. It typically emerges during someone's teenage years and is thought to be more common in women than men — though again, that finding is based on the limited number of people diagnosed with the disorder. And while the numbers of people affected are small, kleptomania can be debilitating. Lynn often avoids going to the shops or visiting friends because she's scared of stealing and being caught. "And my parents will know and I will be arrested and convicted and the anxiety starts going up from there," she says. Concealing the condition — and the associated anxiety that comes with it — is typical of people with kleptomania, Dr Chamberlain says. "We often see that people, develop, anxiety and depressive disorders and other addictions such as alcohol use disorder. Sometimes these can be a direct consequence of the kleptomania and other times they can be happening in parallel." Research into kleptomania is limited, and work that examines the drivers of the condition is less common still. While no clear cause has been identified, we do know people with severe symptoms of kleptomania are more likely to also be diagnosed with other conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or an eating disorder. They also tend to have higher levels of impulsivity. "This means that in terms of their personality, they have a tendency towards doing things on the spur of the moment. Maybe in response to reward, perhaps not planning things through to the extent that a less impulsive person would," Dr Chamberlain says. When researchers look at the brains of people diagnosed with kleptomania against those who don't have the condition, there appear to be subtle differences in the white matter tracts (bundles of nerve fibres) that connect key parts of the brain together. "We also see changes in the white matter tracts … in people with other conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder," Dr Chamberlain says. "So probably there's some kind of common brain processes contributing to these different conditions." After receiving her diagnosis two years ago, Lynn trialled a number of different strategies to curb her impulses. These included talking therapies, recordings of her friends' words of encouragement she plays through headphones while at the shops, and a card she carries listing the potential consequences of stealing. She's also been prescribed the drug naltrexone, which is most often used to treat alcohol use disorder — and which has the best evidence of any medication for treating kleptomania, Dr Chamberlain says. A small but high-quality study done in 2009 found the drug was better than a placebo pill in reducing both urges and actual stealing among people with kleptomania. "So naltrexone is often a useful choice, but obviously as with any medication there are side effects for some people … it's not the easiest medication to prescribe," he says. For Lynn, none of these treatments have been effective in reducing her stealing. She wants more work done in researching ways to address the urges. In the meantime, she manages as best she can. "I have never been caught, and I hope to let it stay that way. But I'm not sure how long I will be able to," she says. *Lynn's name has been changed to protect her identity. Listen to the full episode of All In The Mind about kleptomania and its impact , and follow the podcast for more.
ABC News
a day ago
- ABC News
Christine Yerbury would like to move somewhere without stairs
Christine Yerbury has been waiting since October to receive an occupational therapy assessment to allow her to receive a Deaf-appropriate device.
