Urgent Protest Action Against the Shift of the Community Day Programmes to Wakari Hospital Healthcare activist group, Stop the Cuts to Southern Mental Health, will be chaining themselves to the fence outside the Psychiatric Services Building at Dunedin Hospital today to peacefully protest the shift of the Community Day Programmes to Wakari Hospital.
Spokesperson Scout Barbour-Evans says “Over the last 20 years we have seen an important shift of mental health services from institutions to the community, which has had mixed results, but is overwhelmingly important in the fight to destigmatize mental illness.”
“We have watched over the last year as the Southern District Health Board has shifted services like the South Community Mental Health Team to Wakari Hospital, to general outcry from Dunedin’s mentally ill community.”
“By shifting mental health outpatient services to Wakari Hospital, the SDHB is acting to centralize and institutionalize mental health services, undoing all of the sector’s hard work over the last 20 or so years.”
Scout Barbour-Evans began Stop the Cuts to Southern Mental Health in 2015, after experiencing the devastating effects of a lack of funding on a personal level.
“I regularly share my story on our Facebook page, at community meetings and at rallies in the hope that I can use my experiences to show other people that something has to change, or we will lose more lives.”
“It’s frustrating to see more and more services being centralized to Wakari Hospital, making these services more and more inaccessible by the day. It is hard enough for us as mentally ill people to leave the house, let alone have to travel even further on a regular basis for life-saving preventative care.”
Scout Barbour-Evans will be one of the activists chaining themselves to the fence outside the Psychiatric Services Building, and invites the community to get in alongside.
“We can’t keep on standing by and watching essential services becoming more and more inaccessible” says Barbour-Evans.
