Kerre Woodham: There's got to be better ways of managing our mental health services

You will remember there was some alarm in some quarters when the New Zealand Police Service announced they'd be looking to step back from attending calls from people in psychological distress.  

Over the past decade police say the number of mental health events officers attend has increased by more than 150% to 77,043 in the past year. The vast majority of these were low to moderate risk and safety and didn't require a police presence, they were simply there as empathetic, compassionate, highly skilled babysitters. So, the police are saying that it could be a better use of our time, but because they say there is nobody else to attend to these people who are suffering horribly, then they do it. They're the last man standing, last man and woman standing, they are the ones that have to step into the breach.  

So, these are people, when they dial 111 or their families dial 111, who have varied reasons for experiencing distress. Not all of them have a diagnosable mental illness. One consistent thing, though, is that services can be fragmented, confusing, unresponsive, and hard to access when these people need help. So, they can't get the help they need, they or their families dial 111 as a last resort.  

So they go through to 111, where under the existing arrangements the police are looking to change, the only practical assistance a dispatcher can usually provide is sending a police officer to check on the distressed person and that's when the police officer talks them down, not necessarily off a literal ledge, but a metaphorical one, takes them to hospital, then sits with them while they wait for the hospital to see them. Generally, it's a jolly long wait because they're not acute. They're fine now that they've got somebody there, somebody cares about them, somebody who knows what to say and do, and there the police officer sits for 7, 8, 9 hours.  

But why do these 77,043 people call 111 when in psychological distress when there are so many organisations getting funding from the taxpayer, getting funding from kind souls to provide the sorts of services that deal specifically with these sorts of people and that sort of pain. You know, low to moderate risk and safety, not necessarily a diagnosable mental illness, but somebody who's just exhausted from having to put one foot in front of the other, who has reached the end of their rope. They don't know what to do anymore. They just want to stop. Make everything stop, I can't cope anymore.  

If there were no charities, organisations and services available you could understand the calls to the police. But there are so many that say they deal specifically with that sort of distress. We have the national helpline 1737. Did you know it existed? There's a website, there's an app, there's a phone. 1737. We have Youth line free text 234, we have Samaritans, we have Suicide Crisis Helpline, we have depression helpline free text 4202. We have Outline, we have The Lowdown, especially for children. We have What's Up with 24/7 trained councillors, come on, how many do we need? How many can we continue to justify funding when for all the pretty advertising billboards, all the high profile people fronting the different services, all the different niche specific councillors you have them for gay men and women, gay kids, you have them for young people 5 to 18, you have them for young adults, you have them for adult adults. We've got all of these. There's probably more than I've missed. But we have all of these helplines and yet it's 111 and the police that people of all ages turn to in distress.  

More than a billion dollars in funding for mental health services from the previous administration, with specially trained nurses at GP practices being one of the jewels in this particular funding crown. We've got funding drives every month for a different mental health service and everyone rings 111 and calls the police. What is the point of these services if they're not being used to their full capacity? Can they be amalgamated so that you only have to remember one number? And then it can direct you to the perhaps a Councillor who's trained, specifically worked for Rainbow Youth, or specifically for a young child who's suffering anxiety? 

So you got more than a billion dollars in funding for mental health. We've got funding drives every month for a different form of this service. The latest is Lifeline, who's launched a public appeal to help it keep going as it celebrates its 60th year, it says that it needs to keep going as it fills a big gap in the primary mental health space that people may otherwise simply fall through. Well, they'll only fall through to the next telephone number, or they'll only fall through to 111 and the poor old cops have to go out again. Why do we have so many? Surely, surely, surely, they cannot all be sustainable. And given that the police are the first port of call and are actually doing the job of picking up these very distressed people and helping them see that there is another day. What are the rest of the organisations doing?  

There's got to be a better way of doing this.   

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