Dave Macpherson: A Reminder to the Parties about what’s important for the mental health of New Zealand
Given this is the last blog before the election, it’s important to remind all of the parties potentially able to be part of a Government that mental health has been one of the key issues of this election campaign – although watching the ‘Leaders’ Debates’, you could be forgiven for assuming it was a non-issue, with none of the journos fronting the debates giving mental health an airing, let alone the wider health sector.
In July, a TVNZ survey showed the most significant issue of concern to New Zealanders was mental health, with 77% of respondents citing this area, followed closely by housing/homelessness.
Later the same month, OECD figures came out showing this country had THE worst youth suicide statistics of all 49 nations, while late last month – just as the national tour of 579 pairs of shoes (signifying the annual suicide death rate) was getting under way, the new year’s figure of 606 suicide deaths came out.
I give Jacinda Ardern credit for raising mental health and suicide as an issue in almost all of her campaign stump speeches, as did Andrew Little before her. Her view was that the only acceptable target for suicide numbers was “zero”, and she accompanied that with a Labour Party plan to put trained mental health counsellors and support workers in every high school and ensure training and support in this area was also available in primary and intermediate schools.
When Ardern spoke at the ‘606 pairs of shoes’ Rally in Parliament grounds two weeks ago, close observers like my partner saw that her tears of remembrance for a friend who became a suicide victim were real – various idiots of the blue and yellow persuasion claimed they were ‘crocodile tears’, but I’m satisfied they weren’t.
Another complete dickhead, National MP Simon O’Connor tried to claim Ardern was a hypocrite because she supported euthanasia, which he described as suicide – even Bill English told him to pull his head in, and that they were completely separate issues.
At a meeting with political parties the following day Labour, the Greens and New Zealand First all supported the need for the full, independent Inquiry into the state of the country’s mental health services, while National and ACT (the latter to a lesser extent) claimed enough was known about the problem not to need an inquiry – an ironic response given their abject failure to act on their claimed knowledge for the preceding nine years!
The Greens were similarly sympathetic, and empathetic, aligning close to Labour, but suffered from having too few people speaking on too wide a range of issues to get any cut-through on mental health, something that could have helped their campaign, in my opinion.
New Zealand First have never made a big run at this issue, although they actually have some quite capable junior MPs who speak well on mental health and suicide whenever they are asked about it. They suffer from having a Leader who is pretty much the only one allowed to be ‘seen’ in public.
However, the thing I’m most looking forward to on election night won’t be the current Government going down the tubes, so much as the ignorant, lazy fool who is Health Minister, Jonathan Coleman, going down with them. He has a reputation of parroting only what his out-of-touch Ministry officials advise him, and then blaming those people when the proverbial hits the fan.
It has taken Coleman five years and 10 months of being Health Minister to recognise that the Government’s suicide prevention strategy is not working (that’s if you can even find the strategy), and for every one of those years and months he has presided over a system that has delivered world record youth suicide statistics.
Following the death of our son in early 2015, we approached Coleman’s office asking for a meeting where we could discuss what we thought the issues and problems with the mental health system were, and see if we could get some dialogue going. Coleman refused to meet with us, and has taken the same attitude with others in similar positions. As far as I’m concerned he can rot in hell after September 23rd, and I will be waiting in the queue of those wishing to dance on his (political) grave!
David Macpherson is TDB’s mental health blogger. He became involved in mental health rights after the mental health system allowed his son to die. He is now a Waikato DHB Member.
And English supports Coleman by prancing around the country saying everything is alright with this country, why, because we have a strong economy! Doesn’t help those with a mental illness, homlessness, in poverty and whose hourly rate has only gone up by just over $3 per hour over the past 9 years( so much for the myth of a strong economy and the trickle down effect).
So to use your eloquent words Dave, like Coleman, English and also Key before him, “as far as I’m concerned they can rot in hell after September 23rd, and I will be waiting in the queue of those wishing to dance on their (political) grave!
A number of my family members, myself included, have faced down a range of mental health over the last few decades. My experience has been that the people working in the mental health system really care, are doing everything they can, but they are severely constrained by a lack of resources. Nothing highlights the extent of this problem more for me than some of my friends working in mental health becoming patients themselves, as a result of under-staffing and under-funding.
The other thing that concerns me (although the worm may be starting to turn on this), is a treatment philosophy heavily biased towards diagnosing and drugging people, rather than engaging with and treating the whole person (I was impressed by the way the chap from the Conservatives spoke so eloquently about this on the TDB election debate the other night). I’ve seen some people really benefit from psychiatric medicines, and I now recognize they need to be part of the treatment mix (no, I didn’t always), but what I’ve also see is that those who get the best outcomes also getting a lot of other kinds of support.
There is also a larger political-economic aspect to this. Money spent on psychotherapy, counselling, and mentoring programs, builds our capacity to care for each other in our communities, and is much more likely to be spent back into our economy at least once. But funding for these have been slashed by the NatACTS, even as we continue to pump money out of our economy and into the pockets of pharmaceutical corporations via Pharmac, for psych drugs whose prices are kept artificially high by drug patents (fun fact: most pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing and PR than medical research: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080105140107.htm).
David, I’ve been following your posts here for some time. I certainly have some sense of the pain and frustration of dealing with halfwits like Coleman and the relentless cutting of services in the name of money.
I’m glad you’re continuing to push this message to the public.
Just know that some of us don’t buy the government propaganda and are in fact voting to make this known and to effect a change in our deplorable mental health services.
It is essential.
The medical fraternity are definitely reliant on synthetic drugs to try and solve mental health problems. Understanding why a person has mental health problems is the first step and secondly a healthy diet and good living conditions as well as a good job go a long way to creating a healthy stable mind ?