‘People are walking around with really high levels of distress’: Australia’s regional mental health plight

If it's a problem in the city, it's worse in the country. We look at one town as an example of the obstacles faced by people looking for adequate mental health care in rural and remote areas

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Dr Katherine Graham has been a GP in Horsham for 12 years now. It's a market town in the Wimmera region, about halfway between Melbourne and Adelaide; one of those larger-sized rural towns where people within a two-hour radius come to do the big shop. It's surrounded by agriculture: cropping, sheep, cattle.

There are about 20,000 people in Horsham, but tens of thousands more from surrounding areas use the town as a hub for their health care. For those people Horsham does not offer much if their mental health requires care.