The 2019 Wellbeing Budget has the potential to be a turning point for mental health services, particularly for youth. Sophie Dixon* and Kate Aschoff* spoke with two youth-focused mental health workers about the status quo.
Photo: RNZ/Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Mental health workers providing support for rangatahi say limited funds mean they’re competing with each other instead of working together.
“We are fighting one another for funding when we should be working together” says 24-year-old-Maggie Shippam, a volunteer for the counselling helpline, Youthline.
They say the state of funding for the sector is“pretty awful”. Maggie has seven years of experience working with Youthline and rainbow-support NGO InsideOUT and says funding has been declining for years.
District Health Boards (DHBs) use a “gatekeeping” approach says Maggie which keep limited services for the most critical patients. The result is increased pressure on community, university student health and private mental health services to fill the gaps. Despite being diagnosed with severe ADHD, Maggie was turned away from these services.
"There’re a lot of people who fall between the cracks. The public health care system said I wasn’t within the top 3-5% which I think is ridiculous”.
Maggie Shippam is a volunteer with Youthline and InsideOUT Photo: Supplied / Lioness Photography
The high need for public mental health services means DHBs are only able to support the most critical patients.
“People [working] within this system are so overworked and so underfunded. If that stress was reduced by them getting paid more and having more resources, that would be amazing.”
This problem is not only limited to the public health care system.
“Having volunteered for so many NGOs, a common theme I see is that someone is paid for 30 hours but they work 60 hours” Maggie says.
“I see organisations that turn against each other because they’re so desperate for funding… because they’re given scraps we’re all fighting tooth and nail to get what we need.”
The Government has promised to make it better stating ‘support for mental wellbeing for all New Zealanders, with a special focus on under 24-year-olds’ as one of its priorities in the 2019 Budget Policy Statement (BPS).
But the stats paint a grim picture with the latest figures from the Chief Coroner’s office revealing suicide rates are the highest they’ve been since reporting began and youth between the ages of 20-24 fare the worst.
On top of this a Government initiated inquiry into mental health published in November 2018 found that New Zealand’s suicide rate for young people is among the worst in the OECD.
During question time this Tuesday, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said, “Budget 2019 is about tackling New Zealand’s long term challenges, with priorities that are taking mental health seriously.”
The Inquiry formed the base of the Government’s BPS commitment to improving mental wellbeing for all New Zealanders, but Budget Day 2019 will reveal to what degree its recommendations will be implemented.
In the meantime many young people are turning to community based action to tackle New Zealand’s mental health crisis.
One of those young people is former Youth MP Kii Small, who realised he wanted to take action after losing four friends to suicide in 2016.
Kii Small founded the SaySo Project to help normalise conversations around mental health through video and audio. Photo: Supplied / Kii Small
His platform the ‘SaySo Project’ uses video and audio to give young people an opportunity to connect with each other and share their stories to reduce the stigma around mental health conversations.
“We lose too many people by not addressing it properly” he said.
As a former Youth MP, Kii has shifted to directly engage with his community.
“Wellington is this clean, green, liberal machine but people forget about the rest of New Zealand,” he says.
“There needs to be more communication between local government and national government. A community is the only one who knows what aid it needs.”
There is a divide between those in politics and in our communities says Maggie.
“There’s quite a disconnect between the Government and people working on the ground. We know what we’re doing and have been doing it for a very long time.”
Both Kii and Maggie agree the mental health sector is “over-saturated”. Allocations of funding are complicated by the disconnect between services, the inability of central and local government to work together, and the difficult task of gauging the effectiveness of services.
In the meantime, support services for those in mental distress will continue to cope as best they can.
“I’m neither hopeful or unhopeful,” says Maggie. “I’m just trying to contribute and see where things go.”
Kii echoes this sentiment.
“I just play my part, I don’t want to be the hero”.
*Sophie Dixon and Kate Aschoff are members of the Youth Press Gallery which takes the role of independent media reporting on Youth MPs and Youth Parliament 2019. This article was commissioned specifically for The House.
