Data shows despite Govt’s $1.9b mental health budget no improvement in total beds for patients
There are the same number of total beds for acute mental health patients as there were in 2017, despite nearly $2 billion being allocated for the mental health sector, new data has revealed today.
Currently, there are 608 beds available for acute mental health patients.
Newshub reported tonight this number fluctuated briefly in 2021 reaching a peak of 619, but has since declined back to 608 – the 2017 level.
In Budget 2019 the Government announced $1.9b for mental health, with $235 million set aside for building mental health and addiction facilities.
This came after it was revealed acute mental health units were running at capacity.
Health Minister Andrew Little told Newshub it was “taking way longer than it should do, but there is progress now evident”.
Why can’t Labour force these Ministries to actually deliver policy?
The fundamental difference between Labour and National is that National MPs are all management psychopaths who excel at bullying others for results where as Labour wants to give everyone a cuddle at a hui with a vegan menu in Te Reo and side-order of pronouns.
The public service fear National, they don’t fear Labour and so when Labour pour billions into the Wellington Bureaucracy, they laugh and use it for more glass palaces.
The constant shit fight between Mike King’s Gumboot Friday and Wellington Bureaucrats highlights all that is wrong in NZ politics.
Mike is hated by the Wellington Bureaucracy for criticising their incompetence and making them look callous.
Mike is offering counselling services at a fraction of the price that the Wellington Bureaucracy offers and because he’s done such an excellent job of exposing their vested interests, he will never ever receive any money for his proposals because that’s what happens when you cross the Wellington Bureaucracy.
The horror of our suicide rate gives us a glimpse behind the ‘she’ll be right’ facade of our culture and the dark torment of an alpha male macho mental landscape that is terribly fragile.
Our under funded social infrastructure, our ‘me first’ consumerism, our 30 years of neoliberal mythology, our disconnection from one another, our untreated pain, our lack of hope from grinding poverty in a first world country, our damaged masculinity, the intergenerational consequences of colonialism, our unspoken rage culture, our inability to express emotion beyond anger – all of this demands questions we don’t want to hear as a society and the shame of suicide continues to hide and smother any healing.
In a society that has no religious faith and all the cultural maturity of a can of coke, the bonds which keep us attached are frail and disconnected. In our fetishisation of individualism we have lost the central part of the human condition – connection.
We have traded in our interwoven threads of whanau, friendship and kin for a race where no one wins.
The reason we can’t talk about suicide is because we can’t stand to talk about the dark treacle of self hate and loneliness at the core of consumer culture. We don’t dare confront the hollowness of our existence on these far flung crags of rock for fear of what we will reveal about ourselves.
Damaged individuals competing for a self identity too fragile for the storms and tempests of life.
Thanks to neoliberalism, we are further from each other than ever before.
Look at the manner in which our suicide rates jumped after the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s, where we moved away from the communal towards the individual…
…we huddle frightened on these lonely rocks at the end of the world and slowly one by one slip off into the swallowing dark. Until we are prepared to confront many of the individualism-over-all myths and rebuild our tattered communities, our suicide rate will remain reminding us of our whispered deceptions.
We refuse to ask the why of suicide because we are too frightened to know the answer is a reflection of the shallow and lonely community we have become. Instead we reel off a list of phone numbers whenever we dare mention suicide as if that means a fucking thing.
We are broken and no one wants to admit that.
Mike King swims in this pain constantly and it has hurt him as much as it has hurt us which explains his anger at the Wellington Bureaucracy.
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They can’t get anywhere because they never have any plan, it’s that simple.
Light Rail to Mt Roskill by 2021. That sentence encapsulates Labour. Someone thought of a catchy phrase at election time, no idea where, how, why, they get into power, some money is put up to create it, it’s foisted off to some unsuspecting ministry to work out the plan, outline and detail. And it failed! Who would have thought?
If politicians like Labour think a catchy phrase maketh the reality, they are children.
But look at Wille. There’s a guy with no catchy phrases, well maybe 3 Waters, who toils away in the dark and get things done!
Yes Labour don’t know how to do anything.
@ bob the what ever.
Unlike dirty fucking National and the neoliberal traitors the natzo’s supplanted within Labour like the maggots within the dead thing Labour now is. They knew what they were doing. They fucked us all without the kissing and now they want more and more while we wander about in a daze of confusion worsened by the intervening 38 years which has created a trans generational awareness gap that no one understands how to fill with knowledge, or perhaps more correctly, no dares try to fill. Thirty eight years since roger the stunted rat’s twitching moustache filled our hearts and minds with lies and logical fallacies and now, today, no one knows what the fuck to do about it. Labour isn’t actually ‘Labour’. It’s national 2.0. Labour’s a walking talking political zombie puppet with national pulling the strings. Get up! Get angry! Because National and Labour are the same fucking thing!
We’re a scant few five million on a land area that more represents a massive market garden, we export enough food to feed forty million, so it’s written here. I believe, as a farmer, that it’s more like five times that number.. Our AO/NZ is bigger then the UK carrying 62 million people and yet we’re broke as fuck. WHY? Has anyone else thought to ask that most basic question?
Nine multi billionaires. Four foreign owned banks sucking out billions and billions of dollars in net profits annually and we whine about under funded basic infrastructure like mental and general health. What the fuck’s wrong with us!? Is The Daily Blog the best we can do? It’s like we’re hypnotised.
Professor Stanley Milgram would be hugely interested in us right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
“The Milgram experiment(s) on obedience to authority figures were a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. They measured the willingness of study participants, 40 men in the age range of 20 to 50 from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. ”
@ Bob the first. I know you’re one of them. You drip a little poison here and a little there. You make snide remarks and are belittling and patronising.
But that’s what you do. You’re a toxic little thing but you’re out in the open. We can see you Bob. By your criticism you mean to convey a sense of choice. You’re clearly a right wing neocon which is part of your strategy. By your criticism you invite us to think that we have a choice in Labour. We don’t. Labour and National are the same thing. People? Let that sink in.
Hooray for Countryboy at his best. Yeah and part of this great sucking sound is the money diverted from public health to subsidise the obscene profits of private health.
The public system has been fucked over by the profiteering private sector since the neoliberal 5th column inside Labour got their way.
We need a fighting workers party to take the fight the rotting capitalist system and get rid of the causes of the mental torture it induces in its victims.
We won’t stop the system unloading its filth into our brains without a socialist revolution.
Gosh CB what a load of dribble.
Anyway you obviously like yourself which is good.
I agree Bob, you post a lot of dribble. Given the high adulation you hold of yourself (boasting of your Dulwich school upbringing) I suspect loving yourself is a hobby of yours.
Great article. Deserves a reply.
Better mental health services requires highly trained professionals.
Highly trained professionals can work anywhere in the work and get higher salaries.
Higher salaries we can’t pay because, across the economy, we have low productivity.
We have low productivity because for 40+ years we have fetishised domestic housing and NIMBYism over business investment and economic growth, through planning controls and no taxes on land/housing.
Planning controls make it nearly impossible to have new mental health facilities built because homeowners don’t want the mentally ill anywhere near them…thank you RMA and local democracy.
Maybe universities could be funded for additional places in psychology programmes. Psychologists do not come from outer space, but there needs to be an increase in number of seats available in professional psychologist programmes. E.g. Vic Uni has 16 seats in clinical psychology programme, and there has been no increase in more than a decade.
There will be no movement with Andrew Little there,he’s an ex trade union leader who excels in criticism of others.Now he’s the “boss” he doesn’t know what to do.
oh fuck off bob ,,,, Germany had seats at the table for workers/unions in their industrial power-houses ,,, and they were world beaters/leaders.
It’s all turning to shit for them now due to political neo-lib neo-con idealogs ,,,, but thats another story.
Not sure Germany a good example.
And how the fuck would you know Bob, any experience other than Dulwich rapist school?
It takes at least 5 years to train a doctor in this country.
Who was in power five years ago – and 9 years before that?
The Nats didn’t do anything to plan a decade or so ahead for our public health system.
They had all the stats that told them they should but, no, they thought private health, and the few who could afford it, would do it for all their rich luvvies. Andrew Little is desperately trying to catch up, when Ryall and Coleman (now a CEO of a private health conglomerate) did Fanny Adams.
Bob was only 2 years old when Coleman fucked up our country.
What does Littles vast experience as a union leader have anything to do with anything other than you labeling him and your political bias against unionism? That’s what you’re doing, placing a label on him right? It appears it is you Bob who “doesn’t know what he is doing”.
100% Ada.
The Professional Managerial Class in Wellington, specifically Health NZ, are an overpaid bureacracy who are so self important they believe they are the Health system. That Drs and Nurses are just pests they have to deal with.
Mike King has showed them up. because he was all about providing a service for people. You know, like counselling sessions.
The state of inpatient mental health services is a disgrace. Seriously ill people sleeping on matresses…….
Andrew Little should be sacked. Having listened to Shane Reti on Q and A, I believe he should be our next health minister, (if not our PM).
In terms of health never has so much money $11.1 billon over four years to establish health NZ been so wasted.
the money will go to admin and local talking shops NOT to those at the sharp end….it’s part of the neo-lib malaise…setting up ‘groups’ and filling them with well paid admin drones is progress…look at any field you care to name and how the balance of chiefs to indians has changed
I once had a boss who said ‘Always employ people that will be better than you’. And he did. Now, I don’t know why Jacinda doesn’t employ better people to do the jobs? Possibly because she lacks confidence and fears being shown up herself as incompetent in her portfolio. Like we need more evidence of that! But Little has to go. He clearly does not connect with the health sector.
Mental illness is usually a long term chronic health issue. There is no one size fits all. Its not simple to treat a patient who is chronically unwell. Many patients have no insight and unfortunately don’t see any improvement in their own mental wellness. The big institutions were shut down with many people coming in to the community. A hidden illness became a visible problem for many . Unfortunately the community wasn’t ready and not really able to deal with the chronically unwell in these communities. What is the answer, more beds, more community care. This is not a subject for the faint hearted and policies that should be across party lines because ALL of us are at risk at some time in our lives .
Many of the long term chronically Ill are homeless now.
Whether or not we should bring the big institutions back is another issue.
But we do need sufficient acute care beds for people who relapse
Yes good points Anker but don’t expect anything from Andrew Little his training is to criticise others not do things.
He could probably write up a good Memorandum of Understanding?
When you don’t know what to do set up a committee.
Someone who had worthwhile results from the treatment of addictions at Hanmer Springs was
psychiatrist Dr Robert Crawford, RIP. His funding went from 1972 to 1991 and he was then downgraded.
He wrote a book about his experience and practice called Too Good to Last: The Death of a Caring Culture.
Dr Robert Crawford was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He qualified in medicine at Edinburgh University in 1965 with the intention of specialising as a psychiatrist. Becoming a psychiatrist in 1972, he then found the specialty as practised by orthodox psychiatrists too restrictive and insufficiently compassionate. Leaving psychiatry, he went into General Practice as the doctor serving Hanmer Springs in the South Island of New Zealand. Here he discovered compassionate therapy at Queen Mary Hospital, originally built for treating returned soldiers from World War I but now running a specialised programme for the treatment of addictions.
This book tells the story of the further development of that programme over the 1970s and 80s and describes what therapies were available to patients affected by addictions. Queen Mary Hospital was closed in 2004. The good that came from it is still represented in many people throughout New Zealand and its loss is strongly felt.
Date 2008
By Crawford, Robert, Dr.
Identifier ISBN 9780473133801 (pbk.)
Notes Includes bibliographical references (p. 188-189) and index.
Publisher Hanmer Springs, N.Z. : Sunbeam Publishers, 2008.
Format 192 p., xvi, [1] p. of plates : ill. (1 col.) ; 21 cm.
https://books.google.co.nz/books/about/Too_Good_to_Last.html?id=4IyGPgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Crawford_(psychiatrist)
…He arrived in Hanmer in 1972[3][4] working as special general practitioner to the Hanmer Springs Special Area and as part-time medical officer at Queen Mary.[2][3] In 1976 he became medical superintendent.[3]
He resigned from the position in 1991 in protest at changes in the way the hospital was to be managed with overall hospital management vested in the former principal nurse.[3]
Crawford remained a critic of the hospital’s closure in 2003, blaming it on Rogernomics, and a focus on financial bottom lines which ignored the cost to society of untreated addictions and alcoholism.[4] After the hospital’s closure he continued to advocate for the hospital and its buildings. He and a group of Hanmer residents set up The Queen Mary Reserve Trust Incorporated in 2003 to retain the land in public ownership.[5] In 2018 he joined former patients in a call for the hospital to reopen.[6]
By his own admission he was off-side with the government and some in the medical professions for opposing outpatient treatments and for advocating for effective residential treatment for alcoholism and drug addictions.[4] He was concerned at the increase in drinking and drug taking in society and the liberalisation of drinking laws in 1999 and thought that liquor hours and points of sale should be reduced.[4]
Crawford served on the treatment committee of the Alcoholic Liquor Advisory Programme (ALAC).[2]
Crawford believed that to a great extent addictions could not be helped by medication and that patients needed to find ways of coping with their stresses through behavioural and psychological changes.[2] He used ideas from social psychiatry and practised psychotherapy and psychodrama and recognised that the quality of the relationship and trust between doctor and patient is critical to successful therapy.[2] He advocated for residential care as it removed patients from alcohol and drugs and relieved the pressure on addicts’ families.[2] He introduced the first Māori treatment programme, the Taha Māori programme in the 1990s.[7] In 2019 a report into mental health acknowledged the success of the Taha Māori programme and called for it to be reinstated.[8] …
The familiar story of ideology and theory and perhaps facile cost-cutting, over reasoned, proved, practical and professional advice. Self-righteous and fervent practitioners of politics rather than quality of outcomes in a particular area.
Similar to the tale of Ignatius Semmelweis, methods, outcomes and lives dismissed, wasted by rigid, disinterested medicos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis (the section on his Breakdown and Death is very sad.)
So can anyone show us precisely where the money went and exactly what improved?
No?
That is gross incompetence of both government and the public service.
It warrants a corruption investigation, 1.9 billion is factors worse than &55 million to not build a fucking bike bridge.
Where did the money go? My guess pay rises, additional layers of management, recruitment consultants, high paid locums, temp nurse agencies and consultants to think about what to do with 1.9billion.
So no additional beds.
Any additional nurses?
Any additional psychologists?
Any additional psychiatrists?
Any additional social workers?
They probably don’t know where the money went given their lack of basic management skills.
Accountability is non existent in this Labour Government.
Coming from the National party cheerleader that’s laughable. How about 120mil on absolutely worthless p testing of state houses? Where was the accountability there Bob?
What a waste of 120 Mill.
Accountability was non existent in the National Government.
It did pay for Pullya Benefits tummy tuck though.
Ah yes Martyn, if those pesky bureaucrats (largely LINO voters) weren’t in the way, and if Jacinda’s ministers weren’t so “nice”, how different things would be. Cos I mean, Jacinda and her outstanding team have so many great ideas.
“The fundamental difference between Labour and National is that National MPs are all management psychopaths who excel at bullying others for results where as Labour wants to give everyone a cuddle at a hui with a vegan menu in Te Reo and side-order of pronouns.”
By ‘psychopaths’ you mean people that can get things done?
The person to the left got the job because the person to the right could not get anyone to vote for them.
Given they were given a broken system by Nact, it make take many many years and billions more to fix it. Whilst they ran our health system down, Nact massively increased our population without funding it. That’s a fact, sadly lost on many on this site.
The previous govt the previous govt bla bla bla excuses excuses. Keep it up Labour. It’s working nicely for us.
The Labour govt this, the Labour govt that, blah, blah, blah. Coward Kraut at his Whaleoil best.
So how long do they need to actually improve something Bert? And not make it significantly worse? Three terms, four?
God you’re pathetic, still believing that this government can achieve anything after witnessing the last five years of their ineptitude.
Keep waving those pompoms Bert…
What a complete knob Mickey whoever. You are a cock. Here’s a question, how long does it take to destroy a health system 3 years, 6 years or 9 years? Fuck you are pathetic. You Bob and coward Kraut should get a room. Why weren’t you blaming National at the time when the rest of the country could see they were destroying our health system. Anyone with a brain could see it unfolding. Obviously you weren’t in that group.
This Labour Government would drive anyone to suicide.
5 years of virtual Government is a mental illness itself.
These delusional fools need to sacrifice themselves for the greater good and give us all a break.
It’s the right thing to do for all NZders who are suffering from their Reign of Terror.
Can we choose a Commission from amongst us offering to step in the gap?
Maybe cast around. Mr King is only one of thousands of agencies involved in mental health. I can tell you categorically after decades our Trust has done the hard work, proven our approach and effectiveness and thriving thanks to Labour’s funding expanding from a bathroom sized room to now having 3 buildings in Hamilton to accommodate client and over 60 employed and contracted specialists.
We’ve battled through Nick Smith and the idea that mental injury is not ACC, we’ve been through the shit cover up for no funding called the ‘ social investment ‘ model and now are a nationwide organisation with NGO agencies across NZ with a national body governance. Our services are free, counselling, therapy and whole wrap around support thanks to this government’s support and close collaboration with Govt agents such as Police, MSD and ACC.
I think you are right to remain anonymous. If gummint realise how satisfactorily you are getting on they will decide it is time to cease funding as you can obviously manage on your own. Anyway they don’t want successes, they are used to snivelling neediness from people who can be translated as useless wasted individuals who can never amount to anything they consider worthwhile and will drop off their branch sometime soon they hope.
Aaaa GW, after a few decades you’re strategy is still the same. Like a school yard bully zipping across the playground to any you perceive as a new kid and piss marking your territory.
All that pent up shit when others don’t fit your view.
Just say the word and we’ll book you in for a knowledge tour. We cover the full gamut not the mischaracterized, narrow definitions and solutions I’ve read above of what is a mental health need. And yes even the nonsense that people with mental health issues have no insight. FFS!
You can even pop in for just a friendly chat or plan your very own pathway forward; food, shower, a job, social connections if you’re lonely, sports or hobby, mirimiri, provide placements for undergraduates to excel in training, group therapy or 1 to 1 counselling of all models, (for every bottom feeder, ramraider, bad youth or the elite it’s free ) ; help go into battle if you’re feeling stigmatized, oppressed or abused, support you in court as a victim, literature to support your needs, support for all ages including your loved ones and kids while you’re going through a hard time……. you know all the wrap-around stuff that supports you out living in the community for the other 168 hours a week post counselling session and even give people a ride to attend.
Definitely not using the paltering headline making ‘ x number of acute hospital beds’ as the definition of failure or hospitalization fixing mental health issues.
You either want the Natz slick car saleman’s top down social investment using IDI data to stereotype whole groups as pieces of shit from birth to quantify funding (not funding); or as is the case now you put government funding and resources into supporting a huge network of grassroots agencies who know their communities needs and work in collaborative responses such as the ISR initiative. You could also believe Nick Smith’s 16 sessions and you’re magically fixed #BS model – Or you can have long term input and support whenever the need arises.
The underhand slight is unappreciated.
We’re not annonymous, we’re a Not- for- Profit registered Charity meeting stringent multiple Audits and lawful criteria; actually changing lives for long term betterment with hundreds on the books at any one time.
Come on in and meet
real people to debunk your theory…
” snivelling neediness from people who can be translated as useless wasted individuals who can never amount to anything they consider worthwhile and will drop off their branch sometime soon they hope” … !
The Front Lawn (Don McGlashan and Harry Sinclair) put out in 1989 Oh How You Doing. It seems to me to reflect the empty social intercourse that people perhaps particularly males employ. Notice how one doesn’t really want to know how the other is getting on, doesn’t have any empathy for his ‘friend’ who is in a low place emotionally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfLiHhuZMtg
They cut off their heart in eighty-four — their decision to no longer ‘take along everyone’. All their endless immediate politicking involves never immediately addressing the immediate needs of the neediest. Who happen to no longer vote thanks to them, so don’t matter anymore according to them. A ‘Movement’ needs a heart, but they sold it off many a year ago.
The second, middle class, Labour politician generation didn’t know what they were given from lives sacrificed for the people. They just saw the oddities of their olds, the oppressive controls, limits on their freedoms, and superficial liberal causes. Yep, here comes a cliche, they threw the baby out with the bath water. Or, the people.
I read the headline and responded.
Yes and they continue to throw the people out.
Looking for pom poms in town today anyone help me?
Looking to send them as an Xmas present to a regular on the TDB.
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