Addiction services are under-funded and more treatment facilities are urgently needed, Minister of Health David Clark says.
Natasha Sadler told Checkpoint last week her son Memphis Pitman, 23, died after waiting eight months for access to a drug and rehabilitation service.
The 23-year-old had schizophrenia and found the only thing that shut the voices off was synthetic drugs, which ultimately led to his death.
His mother made a desperate plea on Checkpoint last week for the government to fund more rehabilitation services, saying it wasn’t good enough that they kept being told there “weren’t enough beds”.
Mr Clark agreed.
“I agree with Natasha Sadler that there is a real need for us to increase our capacity for addiction services. It did become an election issue. Mental health and addictions was front and centre because I think most New Zealanders accept we are not doing well enough.
“We’ve had a 60 percent increase in people putting themselves forward for support for mental health and addictions over the past decade, and yet funding has gone up by less than half than that over the past decade.”
Moana House programme director Claire Aitken said the centre struggled to get certainty around funding, and all of their contracts were either for one or three years.
“Unfortunately with many of the DHBs being in serious financial strife, then addiction services are the ones that get cut. So we’ve had no funding increase in nine years, from anybody.”
Statistics often cited that around 76 percent of people in prison had drug and alcohol issues, she said.
Northland judge Greg Davis recently said up to 90 percent of the cases he heard involved people with addiction issues.
New Zealand Drug Foundation executive director Ross Bell said it was just bad economics to spend money on prisons instead of spending money on treatment to stop people offending.
“We give resources to police and we give resources to the courts and ultimately we end up building more prisons, but we never put money early into the problem around health, around prevention education, and into treatment. And we leave it so long so if a person isn’t getting help then we let the problems get worse and worse and worse.”
Ms Sadler said the government needed to focus on building care facilities, rather than prisons.
“The only response I got was there aren’t enough beds. That’s not good enough. Stop building prisons. Stop building prisons, build places where you can get our people well.”
Alcohol and Drug Assessment and Counselling clinical manager Roger Brooking said it was “extremely difficult” to get people the help they needed.
“When someone has both an addiction and an underlying mental health problem, which is the case in about 70 percent of these situations, you refer them to mental health and they say ‘we can’t treat this person till they stop drinking or taking drugs’, you refer them to alcohol and drug treatment and they say ‘we can’t fix this person until their mental health gets sorted out.
“Frequently, what happens as a result is that people just fall through the cracks.”
Memphis Pitman died three weeks ago, but it should have never come to that – it didn’t need to, his mother said.
“I said ‘please admit him, we need some help’, and he was asking too,” Ms Sadler said.
“He was at the meeting saying ‘I can’t stop, it’s got me by the throat. The people selling this stuff know it’s got us by the throat too, and they don’t care, they just want the money’. And he said ‘I need help’. And what was the reply to both he and I? ‘There aren’t any beds’. It’s not good enough. Make some beds, find some beds. My son died. That’s the ultimate cost to pay. Will you listen now. Will they listen now?”
Health Minister David Clark said he’s listening, and things would change under the new government.
“I think with our mental health inquiry, which we’re launching within our first 100 days, we’ll get plenty of feedback on the quality or not of addiction services, and the importance of making sure that they are adequate for the need which is growing in our community.”
