A dirty secret

On November 28, 2014 my son committed suicide, he had a mental health problem. As Mental Health Awareness Week was recently (October 10-14), I would like to address the issues I find disturbing in our mental health system.

When he was alive I tried to seek help from the mental health emergency call-out team. I was told that if my son asked who had made the call, they would inform him it was me, as he had the right to know. I begged them, telling them that my safety was compromised, as he had already been violent towards me, but that was of no concern to them, they only follow the letter of the law.

Nobody lives in isolation, and the family and the friends of the person concerned are deeply affected by their actions. So I turned to the police who were much more supportive, kept my anonymity, and managed to get him committed for two weeks to get the help he so desperately needed. For over a year my partner and I had lived like virtual prisoners in our own home, with locked doors and windows, so for those two weeks I felt safe. I was told after he was released that he was allowed to go out every day to the dairy to buy cigarettes, only 200 metres from where I live. Nobody thought to inform me of this. As soon as he was released, he came looking for me, and was extremely angry and violent.

A few years ago the National Government changed the law around ACC payments for suicide on the basis they didn’t want people committing suicide to get a free funeral. This masks something far deeper, because if they deem it to be an accident like they eventually did for my son, his death does not go on the NZ suicide statistics. This is one of New Zealand’s dirty little secrets. I believe every New Zealander would be horrified if the true suicide figures were revealed. But they remain hidden under a cloud of bureaucracy.

Toby was my son and I loved him dearly. I am writing this letter for him, it was a promise I made at his funeral. Things have to change. Jacqui Furniss New Plymouth

Riding the plastic

I was amused to read in an All Blacks preview by Liam Napier in the Taranaki Daily News that Aaron Cruden replaces Lima Sopoaga ‘‘on the pine’’. I accept that sports writers have a language of their own but this word association takes ‘‘the bench’’ too far, especially when their bums are positioned on plastic garden seats - unless of course there was an intent to indicate their pining to get onto the field. Steve Jones New Plymouth

A dump is a dump

So plans are afoot by council for shops and a cafe at the Colson Road transfer station. Come on, it is a dump and a dump is a dump is a dump. Who thought up this hair brained scheme? I suppose we had consultants in again to try and make up the council’s mind. When will this council and future councils get to grips with what they are supposed to be doing? I certainly wouldn’t mind sitting around and thinking up these ideas if I was getting paid for it. When I voted this year for council I voted for a complete change of faces to get rid of the dead wood that we seem to have gathered over the years. It’s a pity a few more hadn’t voted the same way. Bruce Stevens New Plymouth

Silly stance

Twice in the past week there has been articles in the Daily News about driftwood huts/shelters on our beaches. Stuart Robertson and his colleagues from the district council seem to be on another planet when it comes to this. Too PC again.

Building huts and shelters is in young New Zealanders’ DNA. Many of us as country youngsters spent many hours building huts/ bivvies, even staying over night in them. As far as moving of driftwood from where it lay and moving it a few meters along the beach causing serious erosion, show us evidence of this.

It’s a pity Mr Robertson and his colleagues didn’t spend their time walking along the beach picking up rubbish, rather than pulling down these huts. I visited the hut site earlier in the week to get photos of this construction, it was already pulled down by the council staff who would have walked over some plastic rubbish to get there.

Young creative people are far better building the structures than breaking bottles on the beach or taking barbecues to the top of our mountain. Ian McAlpine Stratford