Psychology
Living standards and asset accumulation are important predictors of future mental health.
It won’t look like it, but this is less a column than a live blog. I’m sitting in the marae at Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand, waiting for my turn to present as part of a mental-health and law conference. The conference has been opened by Nigel Fairley, president of the NZ branch of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.
Apparently there is no rest for the wicked, and that means Fairley has been particularly wicked, because he is also a consultant psychologist and director of mental health for the Capital and Coast District Health Board. Pre-conference conversation focused heavily on topics such as the mental-health and addiction inquiry under way for months now.
I have high hopes for this inquiry. It is peopled with fantastic individuals and we have come out in droves to have our say. If I had to predict what it will say – and I suspect I won’t be alone in this – it is that there are numerous examples of fantastic mental-health services, but that they have been historically under-resourced for current needs. I also think the inquiry will focus not just on the symptoms, but the underlying causes. I really hope this is the case. For me, this is where the rubber meets the road.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has pledged a focus on well-being in Budget 2019. I’m holding out to see what this means in practice, and I’m really glad that I don’t have to conjure up the cash. Decades of underfunding make it expensive to play catch-up. It’s also blimmin’ hard to shift the ambulance from the bottom to the top of the cliff – you need twice as many ambulances.
The theme of the conference this year is the social context in which mental health and law intersect. Presenting before me is Charles Waldegrave, from the social policy research unit of the Family Centre in Wellington. He is talking about poverty, and not for the first time – he’s been researching poverty since I was in short trousers.
Among other things, Waldegrave and his colleagues at the Family Centre and Massey University have used data from the New Zealand Longitudinal Study of Ageing to look at how income, living standards, housing and assets predict future well-being. They show that incomes are hugely important in predicting physical health.
Living standards and asset accumulation are important predictors of future mental health. Poverty, living standards and assets also predict overall well-being based on the standard World Health Organisation measure.
“There is absolutely no question that poverty, defined almost any way you want, has a profound effect on the various aspects of well-being,” says Waldegrave.
My turn at the podium next, and I get up to perform the standard “social cure” monologue. People with better social networks are half as likely to relapse with depression, half as likely to have a second stroke, half as likely to catch the common cold. Loneliness is a massive predictor of suicidality and particularly among the elderly, etc, etc.
This isn’t rocket science, but it speaks to a huge issue. The Government might hold the purse strings, and it can try to influence things such as the minimum wage, house prices and housing availability, but it can’t mandate that we make friends, or be nicer to each other. More’s the pity. However, local and national government do need to play a more active role in providing contexts for us to come together and be part of something.
It’s blimmin’ hard to shift the ambulance from the bottom to the top of the cliff – you need twice as many ambulances.