$10.5m pilot to aid young with mental health issues

People at risk aged 18 to 25 targeted for free counselling, schools plan coming

Ahealth $10.49 million mentalhealth pilot offering free counselling to people aged 18 to 25 will start in December, the Government says.

It comes as part of the Greens’ preelection pledge to fund free counselling for anyone under 25.

Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter said while Labour had a plan to roll out better support for under-18s through school nurses, this initiative focused on those who had left school and were still at risk.

The funding for the programme was provided in the 2018 Budget. Today, a tender opened for all mental-health providers to make a proposal that would decide who and where this pilot should be run.

“The healthcare provider that wins the tender will be responsible for working closely with the Ministry of Health and local healthcare providers, whether that’s the district health board or primary health organisation.”

Genter said the Ministry of Health would be monitoring the progress.

She said the programme was likely to operate in a contained geographic area and would be looking to target the most at-risk communities.

“Eventually a much larger programme will become nationwide for all 18 to 25-year-olds but this is the first step in developing the model and compiling the evidence from a New Zealand perspective,” Genter said.

In New Zealand, about 75 per cent of all lifelong cases of mental illness start before people turn 25. Genter said mental-health services had been in crisis for a long time and the public health system had not provided early intervention — “particularly for that age group who have left home”.

“Those young people don’t have the money to pay for a private psychologist and the public health system doesn’t respond until things have gotten very serious and critical.

“When someone is willing to hurt themselves that’s when they get intervention, so what this programme is aiming to do is to ensure that