All Long Term Detainees Suffering From Mental Illness

CANBERRA - Almost every person who has been locked up in immigration detention for two years or more has suffered from mental illness, the commonwealth Ombudsman says.

Professor John McMillan today told a Senate committee into mental health his investigations into long term detainees had revealed frightening statistics.

"Mental health issues have arisen in at least most of the cases that we have been examining where a person has been in detention for two years or more," he said.

"There are various factors that have contributed to the signs of mental health distress that we see."

Prof McMillan said topping those factors was the length of time people spent in detention and the uncertainty of how much longer they would be forced to remain.

"Their reaction to the stress and unpredictably of litigation and other review processes is an issue, their difficulty in obtaining easy access to specialist care is an issue, their fear that they may be removed from Australia and that a tormented period of their life has left them in a worse position, or seems to have achieved nothing, is a distinct worry they raised with us in every case," he told the committee.

"In many of the cases we've looked up where a person has been in detention for two years or more, the professional advice on file is that the ... length of the detention has an impact and that the best prospect for improvement would be at least a different form of detention."

Prof McMillan said community-based detention may be a better option for mentally ill detainees.

The ombudsman said he had been telling the federal government for years about his concerns regarding the use of management units, used to hold difficult detainees, at detention facilities.

"We have been concerned about that issue for ... a number of years," he said.

However, the use of management units continues to be used at Australia's immigration detention centres.