On mental health: Let’s have some service please!

The countdown is on to Mental Health Awareness Week which runs from October 9-15 and has been organised in New Zealand by the Mental Health Foundation since 1993.

Within that week, World Mental Health Day is annually held on October 10,

aimed at creating a sense of positivity around the world when it comes to the general acceptance of people suffering from different mental health issues. The day is to encourage support towards mental health illnesses and treating patients the right way.

The day also provides a platform to all those who want to talk about their opinions on mental health, to make us realise that it is a real problem we are grappling against.

Former New

Zealand District Court Judge, Ken Mason was recently quoted as saying ‘‘The simple fact is that there’s a persistent community voice at the moment that is really concerned about the lack of mental health services’’.

The reality is that nationally, police respond to 90 mental health related calls every 24 hours. Despite having limited training and backup, frontline police have become the default primary responders to an increasing number of mental health crises. The majority of mental healthrelated call outs do not involve criminal offending or enforcement issues so are actually outside the realm of police duty. However they are usually the first port of call when people with mental health issues are in need of help.

Since the late 1990s, when the last of the psychiatric hospitals eg Porirua, Kingseat and Lake Alice were shutting their doors, many people who would have previously lived in these institutions have been ‘‘re-settled’’ in the community, albeit mental illness is a major concern and often, a huge social stigma.

The focus shifted from institutions (which by no means were the perfect solution for people with mental illness) to support and treatment in local hospitals, the community and people’s homes.

There was also an increasing emphasis on early intervention and on a culture of recovery.

Psychiatrist Fraser McDonald served as the medical superintendent at both Carrington and Kingseat hospitals in Auckland. He warned of the risks, as well as advantages, of phasing out psychiatric hospital services in place of community care.

‘‘Let there be no misunderstanding, if these social structures are to be established and are seen as utterly essential for the proper healthy development of community psychiatry they … will need to involve at least as much money and as many people as have been involved in creating and maintaining the old institutions. To do anything less will be false economy of the cruelest kind,’’ he said.

The Associate Minister of Health wrote in the Minister’s Forward to Rising to the Challenge: The Mental Health and Addiction Service Development Plan 2012–2017: ‘‘Despite all the improvements over recent years, service quality and the level of access to services remain variable for people with mental health and addiction issues‘‘.

Today, a number of the people who have a mental illness are, for a whole variety of reasons, often disconnected from the support of their family or whanau. Because of unsociable, difficult or violent behaviour, which family members are unable to manage, many people with a mental illness are living alone in the community, often in accommodation not suitable to their needs or living rough on the streets. This results in their being reliant on those working in the mental health sector to monitor their well-being and their taking of medication etc. Not surprisingly, the demand for specialist (mental health) services is rapidly increasing. Eight years ago 96,000 people were using the service each year; now it is 168,000.

There is still much work to be done before all New Zealanders can have the confidence that they can access high-quality mental health and addiction services. In many instances the people with a mental illness are not able to campaign for better, more appropriate forms of care, so the ‘‘baton is passed’’ to other members of the community and those who work in related sectors.

What happens when someone living with mental illness, after being rejected time after time after time encounters a person that loves them unconditionally? Perhaps that is something Mental Health Awareness Week can help many of us find out.