Mental health, addiction plan updated

A NEW suicide prevention strategy, a focus on workforce development and greater involvement of families in treatment are key features of the newlyreleased Southern District Health Board mental health and addiction system strategic plan.

The plan is a new iteration of Raise Hope, its initial plan, which was released in 2012.

The new document incorporated lessons learned from that strategy, and also aimed to meet the intentions of the SDHB’s primary and community strategy and the Government’s response to its mental health inquiry, SDHB mental health medical director Evan Mason said.

‘‘The strategy will help direct efforts to where they are needed most.

‘‘By looking at the big picture we can identify the greatest needs and challenges, and respond collectively.’’

Maintaining the mental health workforce was identified as a major challenge by the plan; there were recruitment and retention issues in some disciplines, limited capacity and capability in primary health, increasing demand, more complex cases and the current team of clinicians was ageing.

‘‘Workforce planning is vital to the ongoing delivery of effective and highquality mental health and addiction services.

‘‘It enhances the mental health and wellbeing of people by ensuring a highly skilled, sustainable workforce delivering quality services.’’

The plan envisaged an expanded role for community support workers, a closer relationship with training providers and

greater awareness and training for GPs practices in mental health issues.

The SDHB’s mental health, addictions and intellectual disability has been moved out of specialist services and into ‘‘Strategy, Primary and Community’’ as part of a move for all health services to work more closely together on mental health and addiction.

The plan also hoped families would play more of a part in the treatment of their loved ones.

‘‘Whanau play a critical role in supporting the wellbeing of those around them, and in turn it is important that they are supported to do so.

‘‘We know that relevant support needs to be available as close to the need as possible, and this will become a key principle in the redesign and delivery of our service.’’

The plan expected a new suicide prevention plan would be completed and put into action by June next year.

The board would research, adopt and resource a bestpractice plan, and would also aim to decrease the number of young people going to emergency departments due to selfharm decreasing by 5%.