To feel better, people need jobs
In recent years, the mental health system has been poked and prodded by analysts so often that you’d think the last thing it needs right now is yet another exploration of its needs and shortcomings.
Surely, what the current system needs is action (and adequate funding) and not another round of scrutiny, however well-meaning the effort may be.
Presumably, the review announced by government last week will be reporting back on (a) the drivers of demand for mental healthcare, (b) the extent of current and future need, and (c) the best ways of delivering quality care to the varied people in need.
While the reviewers assemble to do their thing, an interim boost to mental health funding seems essential, given the review won’t be completed until late October. At that rate, vulnerable people could well die before the government manages to get all its ducks in a row.
The rise in demand for mental health services and the failures in delivery were highlighted last year by the Auditor-General, in a highly critical report. The shortcomings identified made for dismal reading.
Reportedly, services were understaffed and fragmented, no official suicide prevention programme existed, money given to DHBs didn’t filter through to primary care, many mental health files were hand-written and difficult to access, and patients were forced to repeatedly tell their stories as they moved through the system, often revictimising them.
Moreover, unless patients were severely ill, they were unlikely to get counselling or therapy. Those with milder conditions were usually given pills by a GP, and never received counselling. Some universities had only eight full-time counsellors for up to 20,000 students, etc, etc.
Alas, even a sizeable funding boost for the core system would barely begin to address the provision of adequate community services to support the people in our midst who have mental health problems. In other words, this year’s review has to do a lot more than find ingenious ways to stretch the system’s current resources even further.
Ultimately, it probably needs to question why, as a society, we are generating so many people who are struggling to cope with the challenges to their mental health.
Arguably, the answers cannot be divorced from the economic policies that (in some regions) have laid waste to the jobs that formerly gave meaning and a sense of worth to the lives of so many people.
If we systematically treat people like disposable objects, it probably shouldn’t be all that surprising if they begin to feel socially estranged, and depressed.
In that respect, an opportunity exists for the mental health review to work in tandem with the government’s newly announced plans on job creation, which purport to create (and to subsidise) meaningful new jobs.
After all, it is largely through participation in meaningful work that most of us bring order and a sense of value to our own lives.
To do its job properly then, the review will need to identify the path to full employment, and meaningful jobs.
Otherwise, we’re likely to keep churning out more people in need of mental healthcare, while trying to fund their care from a declining fraction of the nation’s wealth.
‘‘If we systematically treat people like disposable objects, it probably shouldn't be all that surprising if they begin to feel socially estranged, and depressed.’’