MPS help man ‘failed’ by mental health system

Labour MP Kelvin Davis says the mental health system has a lot to answer for, following an eyeopening night supporting a desperate man calling out for help.

About 10pm on Friday Davis was driving back to Whangarei from Auckland when he received an ‘‘ominous’’ text from a Dunedin man. ‘‘Sorry and goodbye,’’ the text read.

Davis had first come in contact with this man when he was in prison in Christchurch and had kept in contact with him through letters and visits since. Davis immediately pulled over. ‘‘I rang him and said: don’t do anything to hurt yourself.’’

The MP then texted colleague Clare Curran, Labour MP for Dunedin South, asking her to contact emergency services.

While police and ambulance staff were making their way to the man’s house, Davis kept him talking. It was a long night with a lot of texts, calls and stressful moments. Curran said the man was eventually admitted to a mental health ward in Dunedin.

To ensure he was taken in she said she invoked the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992, that requires someone to be put into care. She said it was the first time she had used the legislation but she felt there was no alternative.

‘‘In my eight years of being an MP this has been one of the most difficult cases I’ve dealt with, just the frustration of being unable to get this man what he needs,’’ she said. ‘‘This is not just about one man either.

‘‘There will be many others out there in the same situation.’’

Curran said the man had visited her at her office or called her about three or four times a day for the past five weeks.

He was increasingly desperate and agitated and was ‘‘crying out for help’’. ‘‘The risk is not just to himself either, that’s why I’ve been so dogged about this; I believe the whole community is affected,’’ Curran said.

Davis said this man was not an easy person to help but it was the job of mental health services to help people in this situation.

‘‘He’s hard work, but that’s mental health.’’

Like many others who end up in prisons, the man did not have an easy start to life and his mental health issues were largely a result of the sexual abuse he suffered as a child and since, Davis said.

But this was not a case of someone slipping under the radar.

‘‘He’s not falling through cracks, he’s slipping through canyons . . . He’s unwell and needs help and where the hell are mental health services?’’

Davis was up past midnight trying to support the man and Curran took over the job on Saturday, writing letters to the people responsible for helping this man.

The last Davis heard, police had taken the man to the hospital’s emergency department where he was treated for non-life threatening injuries.

He was then given a taxi chit for a ride home to his house, where he has no heat, no power and no food.

On Saturday morning, Davis posted on social media about the lack of support for the man, who he knows is not the only person in this situation.

‘‘He’s hard work, but that’s the nature of people with mental health issues. It’s not a reason to abandon him.

‘‘Mental Health Services are paid to help. They must do their job regardless of how hard he is, or how complex his needs are,’’ Davis wrote.

‘‘He gets punished for being unwell.

‘‘After people end their lives we often say: If only he’d told us how he’s feeling we could have done something.

‘‘This guy is screaming out for help. He has self-harmed, he has self-referred, he has tried to get rearrested so that he can go back to the relative safety of prison.

‘‘Nobody who can help, will help . . . Those authorities have failed him.’’

Davis said he didn’t know what the answer was but said something needed to be done.

This man had repeatedly asked for help and had not been provided with the long-term, wraparound support needed for people in his situation.

This incident comes after a recent spate of suspected suicides in Davis’ home region of Northland.

At least five suspected suicides in the Northland town of Kaitaia during the past 12 weeks has left the town shocked.

Head of He Korowai Trust Ricky Houghton has told media the recent string of deaths reflected a feeling of hopelessness in the town.

Houghton’s nephew, a 28-yearold father of two young children, was among those who died by suspected suicide.

The community was struggling with feelings of blame, he said.

‘‘Maybe we could have been doing more, we should be doing more.’’

Houghton said Kaitaia did not have the resources to deal with complex issues, that stemmed from deep-rooted problems in the town where a third of the population lived below the poverty line and 85 per cent were on some kind of benefit.

‘‘There are feelings of hopelessness; feelings that there is no future.’’

At the moment things feel like they could not get much worse but Houghton was worried they could, with the next step being civil unrest.

‘‘I’ve told the community, the cavalry aren’t coming.

‘‘They’ve abandoned us as a community . . . so the solutions are going to have to come from us,’’ Houghton said.

Meanwhile, Northland MP Winston Peters said ‘‘economic despair and a lack of job opportunities’’ were part of the problem.

‘‘A lack of economic engagement has been a common factor leading to drug and alcohol abuse and the social dislocation that those practices generate.

‘‘Until central government provides meaningful regional development and economic sustainability and support services this appalling blight on families is likely to continue,’’ Peters said.

Following the first deaths, a Kaitaia College student organised a town meeting with suicide awareness advocate Mike King. About 180 people attended the meeting.

This isn’t the first time Northland has been singled out for its disproportionately high suicide rate.

There has been a steady stream of news reports on the topic dating back to 2007, pointing to a lack of awareness and support around mental health issues, as well as the factors mentioned by Peters.

Suicide data for the 12 months to May, show 10 people had died by suicide in the Far North, with a further eight in Whangarei.

These numbers do not include the recent deaths.

Meanwhile, there has been another string of suspected suicides on the West Coast, with at least deaths in the past 18 months.

A total of 567 people died by suicide in New Zealand during that 12-month period, coroner figures show.

These aren’t the finalised figures for the year, which are measured from July to June, in line with the financial year.

The official figures for the 2015 year put suicide deaths at 564 – the worst number on record.