Kaitaia to Invercargill: Our own report of the Mental Health Inquiry
Jess McAllen attended 15 public meetings of the Government’s Mental Health Inquiry, from Kaitaia to Invercargill. She met frustrated families and people who spoke about their illness and wellbeing. This week Health Minister David Clark formally received the 200-page inquiry report. It has 40 recommendations that the Government will present to the public the week before Christmas.
As Jack Taylor walked away from the Cardboard Cathedral, he was almost hit by a car. He dodged it, and laughed as it missed him. That’s now.
There were days in the past when the 21-yearold crossed roads obliviously. Others nod, they’ve been there too. A good sign that you’re no longer suicidal is bringing yourself to look left, then right before crossing.
Taylor had been at the Christchurch meeting of the Mental Health and Addiction Inquiry. One of the big promises made by Labour in their 2017 election campaign, the $6.5 million project encompassed 26 public meetings from May to August – plus more than 400 private ones, 5500 submissions and a report to the Government on how to fix a broken system.
On Wednesday, Minister of Health David Clark formally received the 200-page inquiry report. It has 40 recommendations that will be made public by December 19, after the Government has had time to digest its findings.
For some, it will be an early Christmas present. Between July 2017 and June this year, 668 people died by suspected suicide – a 10 per cent increase on the previous year.
At most of the inquiry’s public meetings, the voices of the families and workers were the strongest. But it was a wellbeing tug-of-war – in the same meeting where someone would argue for the return of mental hospitals, someone else would say time in an inpatient unit was ‘‘the most degrading and daunting experience of my life’’.
Many families advocated for longer hospital stays. Some wanted more involvement in care, access to medical records. Some wanted to end unescorted leave, which allows people to take a 10-minute walk or ciggie break. Nicky Stevens, whose coronial inquest was being held at the same time, had headed off alone from a secure unit in Hamilton to have a cigarette – but his body was later found in the Waikato River.
How do you balance the rights of a person living with suicidal thoughts with the rights of family who, as one young man said of his mother, ‘‘dread the day I come home and find her body’’? How do you help someone seeing and hearing a different reality, who spirals into distress when confronted? What about the nurse who wants to work without being punched?
‘‘This better work,’’ some said with menace. Many begged: ‘‘Help us.’’
Others were resigned: ‘‘This won’t be the first time we’ve been let down.’’ One man showed the scuffed shoes and hoodie that his son wore when he killed himself.
People talked and cried and yelled to a panel they hoped would make a fundamental change.
It can be weird to hear yourself described as a lost lamb. That’s why Jack Taylor left the meeting at the cathedral to drink hot chocolate and debrief with others. Taylor dropped out of Waikato University in 2015, his first year. It was ‘‘a bugger’’ because he was studying engineering on a scholarship.
By the time he left, everyday tasks had become impossible. At the Subway near campus, he would always order the chicken bacon ranch sub. But then even that became too difficult. ‘‘I used to get panic attacks just going into Subway … I’d freak out trying to order my meal. Then go home.’’
At the packed meeting in Christchurch, he stood up. I was diagnosed with panic disorder, he said, but now I’m speaking to you all.
He wasn’t planning on speaking. But when he saw the age of the crowd, he wanted to voice a youth perspective. In 2017, 137 Kiwis aged between 10 and 24 died by suspected suicide. Fifty-five per cent were aged 20-24. ‘‘People need to listen to our personal experience and prescribe help around the way we need it.’’
He’s learnt – through extensive therapy – how to live with his emotions. He was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Medication worked for him, despite ‘‘being quite antimedication to start with’’. The lows still come and go but he knows how to manage them. Taylor has a semi-colon tattoo that signifies a life that could have stopped but went on: a pause, not an end. Another says ‘‘I’m fine’’, upside down it reads ‘‘save me’’.
He has attempted suicide many times. After one attempt, he was detained in a Masterton police cell. ‘‘They took my phone and I had to put my shoes outside so I wouldn’t have my shoelaces. I was locked in a cell for like two hours before the crisis team turned up. They said ‘that was a bad idea, you shouldn’t do it again’ and sent me home with my dad.’’
Last year, police responded to almost 35,000 mental health callouts. ‘‘When you go through that trying to get help, it makes you sort of not want to get help because no one wants to be put in a cell,’’ Taylor added.
A few weeks after the Christchurch meeting, the Government would scrap a pilot for mental health workers to go with police to such callouts.
Police had a large presence at the public meetings. In Auckland, there was a row of officers – one suggested giving hospital security staff the right to restrain people. He said pepper spray and Tasers shouldn’t be used on people in mental distress. ‘‘We shouldn’t put people in cells alongside hardened criminals, but we do.’’
In Masterton, the same: ‘‘We realise that police cells are not a place for mental health persons … but where do we put them?’’
Senior Sergeant Laurie Culpan, who holds the Counties Manukau mental health portfolio, said more direction was needed on who should help people in crisis because police aren’t clinically trained.
In 2014, Sentry Taitoko died in a Manukau police cell, where he was taken to sober up after taking heavy drugs and alcohol. An ICPA report found that the 20-year-old hit his head 83 times. This was the catalyst for police in the area to stop detaining people in a health crisis, said Culpan.
‘‘You go into these situations and they are frustrating because you don’t necessarily know how to help the person,’’ he said. ‘‘We’re not the first people that families want to see and we’re not mental health professionals. All we can do in those situations is look at the criminal aspect of what may have been occurring.’’
People associate 111 with an emergency and don’t realise they can call mental health services, such as local DHB Crisis Assessment Teams, he added.
Gloria Whyte was at the same meeting at Nga¯ Kete Wa¯ nanga marae as Culpan. Her son is going through the courts because he was failed by mental health services, she said. He hit his uncle and nephew during a mental health episode.
Whyte said he ran out of medication when visiting the family farm in Kaitaia. He went to health centres but none would help because he wasn’t enrolled in the area.
He was in a mental health inpatient unit before the assault. ‘‘I rung them up and said, ‘I don’t think he’s in a good space, you let him go out early’ and they said, ‘no, no, it’s a revolving door. We just give them medication then they go and they’ll be back’.’’
Whyte said that revolving door had to close. ‘‘They ignored it, ignored it, ignored it, and now we’re in court. Because of the lack of support in mental health – both to the family and the person going through it.’’
She wants a mental health court, district health boards catchment zones broken down, and wellness centres that are people-focused.
‘‘You look at beds, mental health will say we don’t have the beds … the next place is the cop station. I’m hoping the inquiry will make a shift.’’
At the end of May, Corinda Taylor was preparing to open the Hope Centre for suicide prevention. Taylor, whose son died in 2013, has been a vocal campaigner. She said the Mental Health Act needs to be reviewed and ‘‘also the Privacy Act … not one person told us that Ross was suicidal because he was 19 years old. That information could have saved Ross’ life.’’
Other parents shared her exasperation. ‘‘I see the pamphlets, I see the signs, I ring up but no … they want to talk to my boy but he doesn’t even know what’s going on’’, one said.
Stephanie August, from Tokoroa, sat at the back of the Hamilton meeting. Her 20-year-old son died by suspected suicide in July 2017. She demanded to be heard, even after the meeting wrapped up.
Robert ‘Bobby’ Farrar started to change after his 18th, she said. ‘‘It’s not like he was out of the gate crazy, he was just different to what he was before.’’
She was angry, blamed herself, and was still trying to find meaning.
‘‘I sort of followed my son down the rabbit hole,
‘‘You go into these situations and they are frustrating because you don’t necessarily know how to help the person.’’ Senior Sergeant Laurie Culpan, left
to see why he died, and I almost joined him to be honest – but I was lucky. I had the capability to ask for help, to say ‘hey, this is going too far’ or ‘someone needs to pull me out’.
‘‘I couldn’t get out of bed. Blame. I went right into blame. I blamed myself big-time. I had so much regret. So much guilt. Every single memory where I said no to that kid was playing like a nightmare horror show in my head.’’
She wasn’t offered grief therapy. No-one from the services her son used came to the funeral. It hurt, though she acknowledged she can’t blame them for everything.
What eventually helped was her partner and kids. ‘‘They just knew that I was changing to what I normally am. This is who I normally am.’’
At a small midday meeting in Kaitaia, one man said institutions need to come back. The panel is usually quiet when people express their opinions but at this intimate gathering, a member responded.
‘‘Locking them in doesn’t necessarily help. We haven’t replaced hospitals with adequate housing and support for people . . . An issue that has come up is the funding that goes to NGOs varies dramatically across the country.’’
People who opted not to take part in the inquiry include Tom Goulter, a long-term service user, who said confining people to institutions out of fear they would kill themselves was ‘‘barbaric’’.
‘‘The alternative is giving them the freedom to self-harm, and maybe if people are worried about that, they need to ask how they’re contributing to a world that gives people no recourse but selfslaughter. But that’s too big.’’
Another man who didn’t attend added: ‘‘The voices of patients never, ever steer the discussion. It’s one of my worst fears, really, being shoved away in a place somewhere for exhibiting the symptoms of mental injuries.’’
‘‘Not one person told us that Ross was suicidal because he was 19 years old. That information could have saved Ross’ life.’’ Corinda Taylor