Opinion: Funding for mental health desperately needed

COMMENT:

Funding for mental health was high on the wishlists of many sector leaders and locals in the lead up to yesterday's Budget announcement.

Its prominence reflected the increasing unease about increasing mental distress in New Zealand and the pressure this is placing on those at the frontline trying to help.

Those concerns were acknowledged in yesterday's Wellbeing Budget, when Finance Minister Grant Robertson announced the Government will spend $1.9 billion on mental health over five years.

The funding will be used to tackle a growing mental health crisis facing the country.

Among other things, the money will be used to provide a new universal frontline mental health service, to develop on a new suicide prevention strategy and to fund addiction facilities.

It comes after a wide-ranging report into the mental health system last year, which revealed the scale of the problem facing the country.

The report of the Government Inquiry to Mental Health and Addiction recommended urgently implementing a national suicide prevention strategy, reforming the Mental Health Act and establishing a Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission to act as a watchdog.

The report also provided clues as to why mental health has become such an issue in this country.

It found clear links between social deprivation, trauma, exclusion and increasing levels of mental distress. Aspects of modern life, such as loss of community, isolation and loneliness are also contributing factors.

Further evidence of the demands facing the health sector emerged this week in another report that showed the number of people forced to wait eight hours or more when seeking urgent mental health help at hospital emergency departments increased 23 per cent in less than a year.

The release of this week's Budget may have been marred by leaks providing information of key announcements but in prioritising spending on mental health, Robertson, in my view, got it right.

We are yet to see how the initiatives outlined in yesterday's announcement will be successful, but it provides some measure of hope that something is, at last, being done.