Call for mental health funding

Jeanette Maxwell. Photo / File

Federated Farmers wants mental health funding for rural communities to tackle the high suicide rate among farmers.

Health and Safety spokesperson Jeanette Maxwell said major changes needed to be made to the health system to better support farmers.

She questioned the number of doctors from overseas who did short stints at rural practices before moving on.

Practice nurses should be offered training in mental health and wellbeing as they were more likely to stay at rural practices, she said.

"Often some of these doctors don't understand the psyche of the Kiwi farmer quite the same and even within these practices there isn't someone who has training in mental health and wellbeing. They are just in general practice ... then they move on so farmers don't consistently see the same doctor.

"But what we do see frequently is the same nurse stays at the practice for years. So we've talked about having funding for them."

Last year, 541 New Zealanders took their own lives and we know the cost of suicide painfully well in rural New Zealand, she said.

Chief Coroner Judge Neil McLean did not give a specific breakdown but Mrs Maxwell said generally under World Health Standards if you standardised the NZ population per 100,000 it was sitting at 11.1 to 11.2 suicides while in the rural sector it ranged between 12.2 and over 16.

"Depression was a curable illness," she said. "You need to have counselling and good support so that you know your trigger mechanism and go 'oh - I know that path I remember that I need to do this and this to keep myself mentally well'."

Bay of Plenty District Health Board clinical director Dr Sue Mackersey said it funded a wide range of services in the community to treat depression and other mental illness.

"Farmers can access these by seeing their GP and getting a referral," she said. "Alternatively they can contact the Mental Health and Addiction Services through the hospital in Tauranga or Whakatane where they will be given advice about which service is most appropriate for them to contact."

The most important thing that farmers could do was seek help, she said.