Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says there isn’t a mental health crisis despite a new Government report finding ballooning specialists wait times for children and adolescents, and increased antidepressant and antipsychotic medication dispensing for young people.
All mental health services for children and adolescents are short at least a quarter of clinical roles, with the deficit as high as 40 per cent in Wellington, despite a huge $1.9 billion investment in mental health from the Labour Government as part of its wellbeing budget in 2019.
“We are not a huge fan of the word crisis because I think it’s used really liberally,” Bloomfield said during a 1pm Covid-19 briefing in Wellington. “There is no doubt we have significant mental health issues and challenges in the country.”
Bloomfield said two thirds of the funding had gone towards the health system, with a new range of primary care services as a result. There were also a number of hospital-level initiatives underway to grow the workforce, but there was a shortage of psychiatrists and psychologists around the world.
Tribal left Labour dragged Mike for the temerity of embarrassing Jacinda over her pitiful delivery capabilities in mental health while the woke left (many of whom are Wellington based and in the public service) see any criticism of their beloved bureaucrats as on par with pissing in holy water.
Mike is providing 15000 hours of counseling within days of asking for help for a tiny fraction of the 20000 hours the Ministry provided.
From the blunt perspective of the Ministry, half of suicide victims don’t ever bother to reach out before committing suicide so why bother putting money into something that has so many variables.
And it’s mostly men who kill themselves and male mortality rates don’t matter much politically unless they are killing others.
Mike is exposing the callous indifference of the Wellington bureaucrats while embarrassing them by providing a far more cost effective counselling service while highlighting Labour’s lack of leadership.
Watching Labour pour $1.9 billion into mental health and getting nothing back is a reminder of what the tru difference between Labour and National are.
Labour take their candidates from unions and straight out of University Politics and everyone gets a cuddle and a hui with a side order of pronouns and a vegan menu in te reo. The public service laugh at this weakness.
National draw their candidates out of the managerial class and they are all psychopaths who take cattle prods to the the public service and bully them to get results.
Public health pay lip service to Labour because no one in the Public Service is frightened by Labour, so much so that Labour can pour $1.9billion into mental health and get nothing.
The reason Mike King is such a threat to the establishment is because his process of spending the budget directly on counsellors bypasses the lumbering Wellington Bureaucracy and they don’t get all that creamy public money to do with as they please.
That’s why Mike is such a threat and why Tribal Woke Twitter have to denigrate him as a heretic.
Wellington Bureaucracy uber alles!
Meanwhile mental health and suicide continue to wreck and damage lives while the Wellington Bureaucracy tell us all to hush and that they know best.
Labour are simply too frightened to challenge the power of the Wellington Bureaucracy, even after blowing $1.9billion and getting nothing for it.
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That pretty well nails it Martyn.
We still have not really experienced the longer term “covid depression” outcomes other than witnessing a huge surge in the number of angry people ( which could be caused by a range of reasons).
“We are not a huge fan of the word crisis because I think it’s used really liberally,”
as in climate?
Who’d have thought Wellington in particular would have a mental health crisis eh? LOL
Have you sat in a café down there recently and watched the freak show pass by? It’s quite an education!
This government does not seem to like the word crisis. I wonder why.
Two things need to happen. Firstly we need to address the elephant in the room . Years of rampant immigration by National have meant a population explosion over 9 years. This lead to underfunding health to a situation our hospital infrastructure was left to rot. We were asked by Jonathan Coleman to “do more with less” .This lead to large numbers of our health workforce looking to Australia as a place to earn a respectable income and less burden.
So firstly we need a massive increase in staffing across all sectors to match our population and secondly a salary to match our tasman neighbors. Remember NZ is a destination that people want to live, it’s beauty and it’s people, not a place to lose our best and brightest because of a low wage economy, one which Bill English promoted.
I say in response to Andrew Littles recruitment drive announced yesterday, it’s a small start, now to tackle the quality income issue.
The mental health crisis is that services are not available or being provided for those with mental health issues.
The principal problem though is that our society is producing so many with mental health problems.
Its typical for Tories and right wingers to blame bureaucrats and public servants for things that may go wrong but that’s insulting the great and difficult work undertaken by those front line staff. I have family who have been greatly served by the public servants and at all times of the day and night and appreciate that. Yes the MSM can always find examples where things have not gone well and air them publically to promote the Natz. Those staff are passionate and saving lives and should be acknowledged and appreciated. They are not sitting on their arses counting their money, making up stories and looking for the next political post.
Fortunately we have excess capacity to treat all the Aussie’s Nauru and PNG detainees we are about to receive
with their problems …Win Win !
At least one of the reasons our mental health system is stuffed – yes, I would say ‘in crisis’ because it is a matter of live and death for far too many – is because mental health professionals are in short supply, and the most qualified professionals really have no idea what they are doing. Most simply seek to medicate and forget and there is scant time for medication WITH therapy to address underlying causes of issues. When some mental health service users seek what they know they need – high and mighty professionals (mainly psychiatrists) will only provide what they deem fit. GP’s are seriously out of their depth when it comes to mental health so they simply refer to an already overwhelmed mental health system and clients must wait for exorbitant periods before even seeing a mental health professional. Once they get to see a professional there is massively limited resource for psychological interventions that should nearly always be applied in combination with medication – so the medication is provided (what the clinician deems fit) and the client is often not much better off.
It needs to be understood that it is not only the current government that has led to this situation. This has been building since the cost cutting austerity of the 1990’s and has never been properly remedied. The solutions are no only much more funding for mental health but also training and developing a skilled workforce to deliver the psychological interventions that are most desperately needed to accompany medications. The old 1950’s approach of medicate and forget it our current dogma and major issue.
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Why is it that we have a ‘mental health crisis’ in the first place? What’s wrong with our society?
While it’s nice to have an adequate mental health professionals, these stalwart folk aren’t going to actually cure many people. They can counsel, medicate or incarcerate but mental issues aren’t like broken bones: They rarely get ‘fixed’ permanently.
Once again, we are glossing over core societal issues like solo motherhood, long term welfare dependency, abuse in the home, addiction and systemic educational failure. I suspect that if we began to address those, a fair amount of the problem would vanish.
Why is it that we have a ‘mental health crisis’ in the first place? What’s wrong with our society?
Previously mental health was ‘swept under the carpet’ and conveniently ignored, however as medicine gradually resolves serious physical health issues, other issues emerge. The problem is that we cannot move to resolve mental health problems until they are accepted as problems.
In addition, I believe that Covid-19 and our responses has raised anxiety within the community greatly. This is a normal response to a stressful situation. Anxiety issues can and often do feed into issues with depression. Depression and anxiety, while common in terms of mental health issues (often referred to as the ‘common cold’ of mental health), if untreated can fester into much more severe issues.
Once again, we are glossing over core societal issues like solo motherhood, long term welfare dependency, abuse in the home, addiction and systemic educational failure. I suspect that if we began to address those, a fair amount of the problem would vanish.
Most of the issues you suggest are being glossed over are, in fact, subsequent to mental health issues not being addressed. Obviously this doesn’t apply to single mums. ‘Single parent families’ are now more prevalent in NZ than the ‘Mum/Dad and children nuclear families’. The elephant in the room is, of course, poverty and structural disadvantage. ‘Welfare dependency’ is a creation of neoliberal thought and totally ignores the serious lack of ‘choice’ for many who need welfare to survive. It also ignores the plight of disabled people in a society that is far from disabled-friendly. The best way to address these issues is simply politically too hard because it involves spending money in a world dominated by neoliberal hegemony in terms of austerity.
Well done Mike for employing counsellors and cutting out the middlemen. I read on this site labour we’re going to re establish the Mental Health commission. Ffs. This won’t treat one single person.
Good evidence based treatment is what is needed.
Btw think all the bureaucrats in Wellington have access to free counselling through their employment assistance programme. So all good there
The government can’t contain the mental health crisis. What we are seeing is the result of the very troubled times we live in. Locating the illness within individuals and focusing on their treatment, is myopic, we are environmental beings; if the environment is sick then so are we.
Look towards the horizon and we can see further waves of destruction and tragedy, both of economic disparity and the natural environment. Mental distress will only increase, so will social tensions, psychotic breakdown and violent crime. We live a society that rewards its citizens for the production and consumption of material goods. Creating reslient, healthy and emotionally regulated children counts for nothing in today’s world.
We have lost our way, and we are only just beginning to see the cost of our hubris.
I would say absolutely that New Zealand does indeed have a mental health crisis and it goes back to the lack of funding which goes back to the lack of government investments in superannuation schemes until the Michael Cullen backed New Zealand Superannuation Fund was introduced, but by then it was far too late, I think this was the mid 2000’s and Australia had been contributing to their National superannuation fund since the early eighties. Thus, Australia is up to date with a lot of the funding for its public services while New Zealand continues to lag behind.
Alcohol is a factor. Speaking after the recent Glen Innes shooting, Maungakiekie-Tāmaki ward councillor Josephine Bartley noted there were eleven alcohol outlets within a two km radius!
Chloe Swarbrick has submitted a private members bill to try and bring some improvements: https://www.parliament.nz/media/8257/sale-and-supply-of-alcohol-harm-minimisation-amendment-bill.pdf
“She is seeking to prevent groups from appealing the local alcohol policies of the country’s councils and to give communities a greater say over liquor sales in their areas.
“She also wants to reduce young people’s exposure to alcohol advertising, as well as the practice of alcohol companies sponsoring sports teams and venues.” https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-democracy-reporting/300549093/alcohol-pressure-group-celebrates-auckland-council-decision-to-support-mps-bill
To date, there seems to have been little or no political will to change alcohol related laws, despite the harm caused. Similarly with problem gambling: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2022/03/department-of-internal-affairs-launches-investigation-into-auckland-s-skycity-casino-following-newshub-s-covert-filming-exercise.html (Sorry, but I have to ask: Are the respective ministers even half awake? Do they give a damn, beyond the next election numbers?)
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