Mental health services urgently needed in Canterbury, BOP - therapist

A Whakatāne therapist says the Whakaari eruption and Christchurch mosque shooting reveal a health system unable to deal with mass casualty events.

This comes amid calls for millions of dollars of promised mental health funding to be urgently re-routed to Canterbury and the Bay of Plenty.

Irene Begg, a trauma counsellor based near Whakatāne, was involved in the mental health response to the Whakaari eruption and the Christchurch mosque shooting.

She said the same problems of people suffering from vicarious trauma, struggling access to access funded mental health support, have cropped up in both tragedies, while hospital workers and emergency service staff could access counselling through their employer.

ACC only covered work-related mental injury and mental injury that was the result of a physical injury. Extended family members were not covered for funded counselling.

Begg believed the mental health system needs to be better prepared for traumatic events in the future, such as ACC widening its eligibility criteria so families were included.

"The likes of ACC should come to the party and at least offer 10 [counselling] sessions for people involved in such incidents or natural disasters where loved ones have been killed, and they have been affected by this," she said.

In the 2019 budget, the government dedicated $455m for a frontline mental health service to be rolled out across the country over five years.

Health Minister Andrew Little previously said that it was unfortunate this had not yet reached the Bay of Plenty.

But Begg said there was no indication on when this will be available in the region.

"It's all very vague. The government says its going to roll out this and that, but we haven't seen it in the provinces."

Whakatāne psychologist Veerle Poels believed this additional support should be first made available in priority areas where traumatic events have occurred first, like Christchurch and the Bay of Plenty.

She said it was a "no-brainer" to roll out it out there, so people in need had easier access to mental health professionals.

National Party's mental health spokesperson Matt Doocey said the Whakaari and Christchurch tragedies highlighted the the lack of mental health support available for some people.

He said out of the $455m of funding the government had earmarked for the frontline service, only $56 million had been spent, and the service had been rolled out to just 11 percent of GP services.

Doocey said the frontline service should be urgently rolled out to priority areas, such as the Bay of Plenty.

Bay of Plenty District Health Board chief executive Pete Chandler said in a statement the DHB had not received any updates on the additional mental health service and when it might be rolled out to the area.

He said he did not expect to hear about it until later in January, due to the Christmas period shutdown.

"We will however be raising this topic at our regular DHB performance review with the Ministry, so that we are actively tracking progress on it," he said.

Chandler said a new psycho-social support co-ordinator had started at the DHB in late December last year and at this stage, no additional funding for local community support had been deemed necessary.

"With the proximity of Christmas to Whakaari it is more likely that any notable increase in demand would be seen during January and, as such, we will be looking carefully at this data once we receive it," he said.

The Ministry of Health spokesperson said in a statement Covid-19 had impacted on the roll-out of the programme during 2020.

The spokesperson said the prioritisation of funding was based on the readiness of the DHBs, primary health care and NGO providers in the area to provide the new services.

The $455m of funding was allocated across four years, with the amount of funding available for investment increasing each year. Over the first two years of the programme to 30 June 2021, $145m was available for investment.

"While, approximately $56.4 million has been spent to date, an additional $41 million has been committed in contract, and the remainder is forecast to be committed or spent by the end of the financial year," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said the frontline service was being progressively rolled out across the country, with services available at more than 100 GP sites across 15 DHBs and more than 47,000 sessions had been delivered to date.

The spokesperson said the delivery of the service through GPs was one aspect of a wider roll out.

The next round of funding, including for the Bay of Plenty, would be in July this year.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment - which advises on ACC policy - said in a written statement that the organisation had evolved to incorporate more accident-related mental injuries, while still remaining a "fiscally-responsible" accident compensation scheme.

"Parliament has set parameters on the extent of mental health coverage to achieve this balance," the spokesperson said. "The Government is concerned about mental health in New Zealand, and is looking at this in a broader context, as a part of the formal response to He Ara Oranga, the report of the independent Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction."

The Canterbury DHB's acting executive director of planning, funding and decision support, Ralph La Salle, said a range of mental health and counselling services have been made available to people affected by the mosque attacks, including counselling sessions by phone and text through the 1737 number.

The DHB also made free GP consults available to anyone impacted by the shootings and over 2100 free GP consults had been provided for people impacted so far, La Salle said.