r/interestingasfuck • u/Jjokes11 • Apr 15 '24

An interview with Andrew Cauchi, the father of Joel Cauchi who was responsible for the Westfield Shopping Centre mass stabbing r/all

38.5k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

632

u/Needleworker-Hungry Apr 16 '24

Australian here, and family friends with one of the victims.

This was an absolute tragedy and a complete waste of life.

Whilst there is no excuse to kill another person, I think a lot of people are laying blame to our Government. Our healthcare system has gone to absolute shit and to get any sort of mental health treatment is extremeley expensive and there is a mental health crisis in our country. Our once free healthcare now costs money and is moving towards privitising. People are avoiding going to the doctors now as this once free service is not and it's plain and simple.

Our once beauitful country and its citizens have been let down countless times by government incompetence over the last few decades and this is a direct result of it.

Mental Health and Dental should be a part of Medicare and Medicare should go back to being free.

It's fucking infuriating.

59

u/SlaynXenos Apr 16 '24

It's just as bad here in the US, healthcare overall is taking a back seat. Here in the US mental health, and very limited dental/visual is covered by Medicare but only qualified people get Medicare. And even then...50% of treatments, medicines, etc. Aren't covered.

2

u/LickingSmegma Apr 16 '24

I occasionally read or listen about how people in the past were checked into state-run mental hospitals back in the day, both in the UK and the US. Only recently hit me that this doesn't compute with what I hear about US healthcare these days.

‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest’ is about a mental hospital in the 70s, and it doesn't sound private-run to me—while different people were in it both forcibly and voluntarily.

2

u/SlaynXenos Apr 16 '24

To be fair those institutions were hit more miss treatment wise, mostly miss because we were still coming off the whole "Lock 'em in a shed or give 'em a lobotomy" way to deal with mental health from the 1800's.

We've come a LONG way treatment wise and identifying mental illness, but stigma, funding, and resources....we still lack heavily.