Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-hgkh8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T11:57:57.534Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Australia (Melbourne)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

David Ames*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne, Academic Unit for Psychiatry of Old Age, Royal Park Hospital, Private Bag No. 3, Parkville, Victoria, 3052, Australia
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Australia is a unique, geologically ancient island continent. Its flora and fauna are unlike those found anywhere else and the same may be said of its people, politics and health services. The population of 17.3 millions represents a multicultural mix, with an anglo-celtic core conflated by sustained post-war immigration from southern Europe, Turkey, southeast Asia and south America. One in five current Australians was born elsewhere, one in ten comes from a non-English speaking background, and a quarter of those born here have a parent who was born overseas. Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders form 1.4% of the total population. They have third world mortality figures but die of first world diseases, their life expectancy being 20 years less than that of other Australians. Two hundred and four years after what they see as the British invasion, their standard of living lags far behind all other socio-cultural groups in the country. Most members of the Aboriginal community do not live long enough to develop Alzheimer's disease, but it and other age-related diseases are emerging as the major determinants of health costs as Australia moves towards the 21st century.

Type
Letter from…
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992

References

Andrews, G. (1991) The changing nature of psychiatry. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 25, 453459.Google Scholar
Jorm, A. F., Korten, A. E. & Henderson, A. S. (1987) The prevalence of dementia: a quantitative integration of the literature. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 76, 465479.Google Scholar
Jorm, A. F., Korten, A. E. & Henderson, A. S. (1990) The Epidemiology of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders London: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
McLeay, L. B. (chairman) (1982) In a Home or at Home? Home Care and Accommodation for the Aged: Report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditure. Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.