Online only
In the second of a three-part online only feature on health in 2025, Dionne Christian looks at climate change, and mental health. Yesterday: Infectious illnesses we’ll continue to read more about as the year progresses; Tomorrow: Risk factors for chronic illnesses.
Around the world, it is recognised that our warming planet will bring more infectious diseases via biting insects, “species leap” and contaminated food and drinking water. Sally Blundell’s recent Listener story Warming world, emerging viruses: The new health threats facing NZ gave several examples of this.
Blundell wrote: “Climate change, with its volatile tailwind of rising temperatures, increasing humidity, changing rainfall, warmer oceans, drought and extreme weather events, is upping the ante, setting up the right environmental conditions for new and more hardy pests and pathogens around the planet.”
They include mosquitoes capable of carrying yellow fever, chikungunya, dengue and zika infections moving into new habitats.
“Already, yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) and tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), the key reservoirs of chikungunya, dengue and zika infections, have been intercepted in New Zealand ports. There are no breeding populations here but temperatures in the northern parts of the country are edging closer to those required by the Aedes species to survive the winter.”
Additionally, Blundell noted that heavy rain can wash giardia and cryptosporidium cysts and campylobacter bacteria into waterways, where they can contaminate drinking water, as has been seen in Havelock North.
If climate change is one reason why infectious diseases are becoming more common, impacting on our physical health, it’s also now linked with rising rates of mental health issues. Climate anxiety is very real, but it is far from the only thing fuelling rising rates of mental distress, especially for young people, says Shaun Robinson, chief executive, Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.
Robinson points to a long list of issues including global social and political upheaval, hate speech and division around race and gender identity and inequality.
“Young people are right at the place where the hammer hits the anvil,” he says. “They’re looking into the future and seeing a lot of concerning and confusing signs at a time when they’re also going through what young people have always gone through and discovering their identity and place in the world – a world that is now much more fast moving.
“Young people are living a life that young people even 20 years ago did not lead, partly because of the ability to be online. I’m not going to say that’s all bad because there are positives and negatives that come with social media, but it most certainly poses challenges.”
Robinson says he’d like to be able to provide concrete figures about how many of our young people – indeed the population as a whole – experiences mental distress, but doing so is difficult, given there has been no recent research on prevalence.
Rates of young people experiencing “significant” mental distress are believed to be around 20-25% while it’s commonly said that 50% of people across their lifetime experience mental illness. However, that research dates from 25 years ago.
“We’re quoting from research that was done quarter of a century ago,” says Robinson. “There’s emerging longitudinal evidence that shows the figure [for those experiencing mental illness] over a lifespan is closer to 85%.
“People are shocked by that, but they really shouldn’t be. I mean, you wouldn’t expect to go through your entire life and not experience physical ill health. Mental health incorporates a huge range of things, but we’ve got a very two-dimensional view of it.
“It has become a pseudonym for mental illness, but it’s not about people catching something. It’s very much about what happens to you during your life course and what resources you have access to – be they psychological, cultural, social, physical or economic.”
Robinson agrees much of what we read about mental health and illness paints a grim picture of an under-resourced sector struggling with lack of staff and money. However, he says it’s not all doom and gloom.
He points to the fact that, for the first time, New Zealand has a Minister for Mental Health, Matt Doocey, who has committed to updating data about the prevalence of mental illness and distress among young people, championed new peer-led services and found new money for wellbeing promotion.
Importantly, says Robinson, Doocey introduced the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) (Improving Mental Health Outcomes) Amendment Act. The amendment requires that the Minister for Mental Health produce a mental health and wellbeing strategy for New Zealand within 12 months.
When the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill was introduced in October 2021, a mental health and addiction strategy was not included. That omission has now been rectified, says Robinson.
“I don’t want to sound like some National Party fanboy, because there were positive developments under the last Labour government, such as increasing funding for mental health and adding a new layer of service, with mental health workers introduced in GP practices.”
Robinson says a comprehensive strategy is one thing needed, but the social determinants of poor mental health must also be addressed and well-resourced services put in place.
“Even if we had close to a perfect world, even if everybody knew how to live their lives in a way that would maximise their mental health, there would still be times when people need support through tough times, such as grief and loss,” he says. “So, we need services and they need to be diverse with a lot more focus on earlier support for people and then on maintaining recovery.
“But there’s no magic solution for all of this because the bottom line is that our mental health services have never had adequate foundations in place. There’s been massive under scoping of the extent of it and the nature of need; so not resourcing adequately or resourcing things correctly has always been there.
“It’s going to need consistent effort across 10-15 years, and that will require some sort of cross-party political commitments and an understanding of mental health in a much wider context.”
This year, Robinson says expect to hear about more the development of a focused crisis response system to replace police who are working through the phased introduction of new, higher thresholds for attending mental health callouts.
“I’ve said to politicians that if they get this wrong, it will blow up in their faces because we’re talking some 80,000 callouts a year linked to the number one health concern of the nation. If they’re saying they want to focus the police on law and order, then they absolutely must fund an alternative mental health crisis response before the police pull out. This will be a real test for how serious the government is about mental health.”
