A risky balancing act

By the time the Government delivers its verdict on a widesweeping mental health inquiry next year, 150-odd people might have killed themselves.

That’s going by New Zealand’s average suicide rate, which has increased every year steadily for the past four years.

It’s the most visceral reminder of a mental health service in crisis. And yet it’s only the symptom of a much wider issue at the heart of the inquiry’s report – that there is a massive gap in services at the lower to middle end of the mental illness spectrum.

The Government released the report yesterday, but Health Minister David Clark confirmed there would be no response to the 40 recommendations until April, just ahead of the May Budget.

So much for crisis, some might say. In fairness to Clark, it’s a difficult balancing act to ensure both urgency and a thorough response is applied to what has been a seriously protracted problem.

The most long-lasting solutions are seldom the ones that are rushed through.

The Government is already in the budget bid process now, and will face difficult conversations over the allocation of funds between sectors in its first ‘‘wellbeing budget’’.

It makes sense that mental health reform will be a headline figure, but teachers may have something to say about health again taking the lion’s share of funding. And the rest of the health sector, in general, will require its usual novelty-sized cheque.

Very little has been said or done since the inquiry was established, with the Government kicking most of the debate for touch, pending the release of the report.

Well it’s here now, and the Government is still keeping mum on where it’s leaning.

The issue it may find hard

to wrestle with, is that some of the recommendations are inherently political.

One major recommendation is the setting of what would amount to a national health target to improve access to mental health services.

In one of his first major moves as Health Minister, Clark canned the public reporting of health targets – a key feature of the previous Government’s approach to measuring success in the health system.

Another recommendation called for a wider set of services to be made available to patients.

The inquiry panel has pleaded for cross-parliamentary deliberations, to make a lasting set of solutions. But in his comments to media, Clark made it clear this was not a matter for cross-parliamentary consensus over and above what’s mandated through the select committee process.

It’s been nearly 15 months since the election, when the Government campaigned on establishing a mental health inquiry. It’s been just under a year since the Government ordered the inquiry in its first 100 days.

It’s now a day since the report’s release and the clock has already stopped ticking. It’ll be anther five months before we know the full extent the Government is willing to exert itself.

Much of the report’s contents are unsurprising. To the extent that gives credence to the argument the inquiry itself was simply a political stalling tactic upon which to run an election campaign, will also be seen in the Government response.

Using mental health as a political football could be one of the most detrimental things to fixing the system. The worst thing the Government could do is consign this report to the pile of reviews that have been held over decades, when the measures were only half enacted, because politics got in the way.

It’s a worthy report. But it’s the Government’s response that will determine whether this has been a worthy venture.