“Prime Minister has his head in the sand” – Nicky Stevens’ family on call for Mental Health Inquiry

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Tonight’s TVNZ News Poll showing 77% of New Zealanders support the call for an Independent Mental Health Inquiry has been described by the family of Nicky Stevens as a “stinging rebuff for the head-in-the-sand attitude of Prime Minister Bill English and Health Minister Jonathan Coleman.”

“Bill English’s flippant brush-off of the call for an Inquiry is an insult to families who have lost record numbers of loved ones to suicide in recent years, and to the hundreds of thousands of Kiwis who struggle every year against the effects of mental illness with inadequate support” said Stevens’ mother Jane.

“For him to say that the Government already knows the answers, as he claimed, shows both his arrogance, and the fact that they have been asleep at the mental health wheel for some years.”

Nicky Stevens was a compulsory inpatient of the Waikato DHB’s Henry Bennett Centre in March 2015, and a known suicide risk, when he was let out unescorted from the Centre. His body was found in the Waikato River three days later. His parents had previously warned DHB management and medical staff of the danger to his life if he was unsupervised.

Nicky Stevens’ father Dave Macpherson said “there is a huge groundswell of support for the need to hold an independent Inquiry into the poor state of this country’s mental health services.”

“There are staff shortages and bed shortages in our Hospital mental health units; mental health support services are unavailable after hours in many areas, or at all in some rural areas.”

“Last year this country recorded a record 579 suicide deaths, with many other suicides attributed to other factors but not included in these statistics; we have the highest rate of male youth suicide of all developed countries; only 13 schools in the entire country have specialist mental health support available for young people experiencing difficulties.”

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Nicky Stevens’ family, pointed out that a wide range of people had called for an independent Inquiry in the last two years: former Mental Health Foundation Director Professor Max Abbott, Mike King, two recent submissions to Parliament from students and from parents of suicide victims, the PSA union representing many mental health staff in DHBs, “and many, many more.

It is twenty years since the ‘2nd Mason Report’ into the country’s mental health services was held – the last independent review of mental health services.

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