A mental health system in crisis a symptom of much deeper NZ malaise

Nothing sums up the manner in which our underfunded mental health infrastructure has been eroded to the bare threads quite like the case of Ashley Peacock.

Kirsty Johnson’s hard hitting article last week detailing his case should still be reverberating.

The ever brilliant Dita DeBoni picks up the story…

This week we are once more reminded that the mental health system is in crisis, with the update by Kirsty Johnson in the Herald on autistic man, Ashley Peacock, who has been locked in an isolated mental health unit for five years; a place so isolated his long-suffering parents have never been inside.

This is a heart-breaking story, and certainly not an isolated case.

The care of psychotic patients is, of course, extremely complicated. But the key part of the story is identified by psychologists working in the system themselves: Ashley, and people like him with “complex needs” do not have services – or not enough services – in enough places around the country that will allow them and their families decent quality of life.

Kirsty’s story today suggests the Ombudsman’s office, which monitors how many patients are kept in long term seclusion, doesn’t know how many are dealt with this way.

It also notes that the Ombudsman has suggested to the Ministry of Health it build some secure, individualised units for patients with high and complex needs considered candidates for seclusion – but they have not been built.

…Ashley has been locked away and trapped in an underfunded mental health system that has never been given the funding it required the day Labour shut down the institutions and dumped the mentally ill back into the community.

There were many horror stories about what happened in those dark institutions, but the current system seems to be equally unfit for civil society.

It is cheaper to lock Ashley away than fund a secure unit for him and others like him. This is not a system that is helping Ashley, it is a cruel trap that robs him of all autonomy and quality of life.

It is a sad indictment of what our social services seem to have become. Once a publicly funded source of welfare, our state departments now have become a faceless stasi, always looking to catch those using its services and disqualify them from receiving help. WINZ trapping 60% of beneficiaries with debts. Housing NZ hiring motels for the homeless and then giving them the bill. Legal Aid that has to be paid back meaning the poor plead guilty. A prison system that doesn’t rehabilitate and ends up only damaging. Testing state homes for meth and then banning the families from housing for a year. Disqualifying people needing emergency housing if they miss one phone call from Housing NZ. Raising the rent on state houses forcing those families onto the streets. A mental health system that can barely cope with a suicide rate out of control.

We have state departments that are actually harming the very people they are supposed to be helping.

That Key is planning to privatise and underfund our social infrastructure again with a $3billion tax bribe in the 2017 election is as atrocious as his current round of budget slashes as detailed by DeBoni…

The Government has just revealed it’ll slash government funds for the country’s budgeting service by $3 million (despite denying it two weeks ago). Relationships Aotearoa has been scrapped.

Fourteen other social service providers have also lost their funding in the last round, the cuts hitting regional services particularly hard.

…this Government is desperately trying to keep a property bubble afloat to bribe a property speculating middle class while slashing public services for the most vulnerable amongst us.

This is what class warfare in a country drained of its Fourth Estate looks like, turkey’s cheering for Christmas.