The government has launched a two-year recruitment drive for mental health nurses, with hopes of doubling the number entering specialist training.
Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
It comes on the same day the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission's monitoring report on mental health and addiction services has found improvements in services have failed to materialise despite significant investment.
Speaking at the "You're Ready" campaign launch at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland this morning, Health Minister Andrew Little said it aimed to encourage more nursing graduates into mental health and addiction roles.
The "multi-platform" campaign, which officially goes live on Sunday, also aimed to lift numbers of Māori and Pacific people in the sector and bring back former nurses. It is funded through the $77 million workforce development fund set out in the 2019 Budget.
This year there were 234 new-entry places for registered nurses to specialise in mental health, and Little said the campaign hoped to double that number.
"The mental health and addiction workforce do an incredible job and we know the pressure on them is increasing. The awareness of mental wellbeing issues has grown and so too has the demand for specialist services," Little said.
He said the campaign would feature real nurses in the sector who wanted to encourage others to "take up these rewarding roles and to do the same".
"This campaign highlights how rewarding a career in mental health nursing can be, while challenging perceptions of mental health - something that can affect anyone at any time."
However, the Commission's monitoring report Te Huringa, released today, urged further investment in primary and community services.
"More is needed to address pressures on specialist services, particularly for young people," Commission board chair Hayden Wano said.
"Despite significant investment in mental health and addiction services through the 2019 Wellbeing Budget, improvements in services have not materialised as we had hoped for," he said.
National's Mental Health Spokesperson Matt Doocey said the report reinforced what many groups and services told him - they did not know where the money had gone.
"When I go round and talk to a range of mental health services and groups, they tell me they're not seeing any of the money prioritised. They can't point to where that money has gone, so how have we got in a position where no one knows where the money is spent yet it's harder to access services?
He said the report showed specialist services had faced increased demand since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the government must explain why its spending had not made a difference.
"The Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission have clearly said in this report that the government needs to do more than just make announcements, they need to have leadership in mental health and make a clear plan."
The report suggested the government's health reforms - which abolish DHBs in favour of a single Health NZ organisation and a Māori Health Authority - would be an opportunity to bring in stronger leadership in mental health and improve representation of Māori and Pacific people.
However, Doocey said there was little sign the government's restructure was likely to deliver that.
"Both the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission and the Mental Health Foundation have actually been very critical of the reforms in their submissions to the select committee, both stating that actually mental health is very silent in the reforms and they don't believe the reforms are going to make much change in mental health," he said.
An increase in mental distress - particularly for young people - during the Covid-19 pandemic, was being seen around the world, he said, with professionals overseas calling it a shadow pandemic.
"That's why I have called for an urgent Covid-19 youth mental health summit - an idea the government actually rejected - but I think we've got a small window of opportunity to get the best minds round the table and to urgently put an action plan together.
"I'd like to see a cross-party representation. We need to come together, leave no stone unturned, understanding what are the things we can do today and tomorrow that will support our young people to have better mental health."
Little said the government had added about 850 new mental health and addiction roles in GP and community practices, kaupapa Māori, Pacific and youth-specific health services.
"When we became government and we saw the state that the mental health services were in we knew we needed to do something and do things differently."
Today's report acknowledged the government had made a good start and the right things were happening but more was needed, he said.
"There was a lot of stuff to do and a lot of it was going to take some time to do. All the parts are coming into place now and we're confident about the track that they're on," he said.
"The full impact won't be felt probably for another couple, three four years, but we know that recruiting people into those frontline roles ... the specialist and acute end of mental health services, that work is under way now and this recruitment campaign is part of that.
He said there was a worldwide shortage of mental health and addiction workers, particularly of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, and New Zealand was competing with that.
"And although we're investing in training and educating our own that's a seven-to-10-year programme."
The government had inherited mental health services that had been neglected for the best part of nine years, and was only half way through its four-year work programme, he said.
"I compare what we put into hospital buildings, $6.5 billion in the last four years, the previous 10 years it was nearly a billion dollars for the same hospital estate.
"So we have stepped up ... we've done a lot more in the last four years than had been done in the previous period but there's a limit to what you can do at any one time and we've tried to prioritise the most important things. We will get there evenutally.
He also acknowledged the impact of the pandemic.
"Particularly younger people whose lives have been disrupted. School has been shut down, sports training and sports events have been cancelled, that's really had an impact on young people in particular and I mean we put extra resources into that but ... before Covid we took for granted we could just go and do these sorts of things, that suddenly gets disrupted, that is destabilising for a lot of people."