Mental health needs funds

On Monday, Prime Minister Bill English appeared on The AM Show and pledged ‘‘more money for more people, because in the end this is a people business’’, when talking mental health.

If that sounds like vague pandering in an election year to you, then you’d be right.

The Prime Minister gave no details of this funding increase and again dismissed having an independent review of the failing mental health sector.

His comments come on the heels of the damning People’s Mental Health Review, which found 90 per cent of the selfselected participants believed the mental health system is underfunded, understaffed and unable to meet demand.

The fact is, while the Government has been saying it has increased the funding for mental health, in real terms they are only restoring the money they cut from mental health since 2009, which is part of an overall health budget that has been underfunded by more than $1.8b.

Still, simply throwing money at the problem won’t solve it alone.

The challenges to the mental health system are vast and complex.

It will require leadership and a willingness from the Government to learn what it doesn’t know.

That means it must hold a national inquiry into mental health – something NZ First has spent years calling for, along with virtually all industry participants.

The New Zealand health care system operates through the 20 district health boards that each determine and deliver the services for their own region.

The Southern DHB (the combined Southland and Otago region) services the largest geographical area of any health board and this has consequences for how services are delivered.

We have a more widely dispersed rural area and that alone places considerable strain on any preventative mental health programmes and stretches thin our Southland Mental Health Emergency Team (SMHET).

For the Government to really start addressing the problem of mental health, the Government can’t keep leaving it to the regional bodies; it needs a nationwide approach.

It requires a strategy, something the government has never been able to produce.

Mike King put it best: ‘‘Do a stock-take. Look into the pantry, see what we’ve got before you go out shopping.’’

It’s time the government got serious on mental health, because the public will take it seriously this September.

It's time the government got serious on mental health, because the public will take it seriously this September.

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Ria Bond is a New Zealand First MP based in Invercargill