The report appeals for more funding for kaupapa Māori services to help alleviate high levels of mental ill health (file image). Photo: Marika Khabazi
A new report says funding for Māori mental health and addiction services is unfair, resulting in treatment inequalities for Māori.
The report, by Te Hiringa Mahara - the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, says about 30 percent of Māori experience distress to the point of mental illness in any year.
It appeals for more funding for kaupapa Māori services - services by Māori, for Māori - to help alleviate these high levels of mental ill health.
"We're calling for a more equitable level of funding going towards kaupapa Māori organisations" - Hayden Wano
The report said the last comprehensive prevalence study of mental health disorders in Māori was conducted in 2006, finding it to be just shy of 30 percent.
Te Hiringa Mahara/Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Board chairperson Hayden Wano said more recent surveys found "mental distress across all population groups has increased" since then - presumably including Māori.
"Relying on that older prevalence data, the rates for Pacific people are about 24 percent, and for other ethnicities, it's about 19 percent of people with some form of mental disorder, diagnosable mental disorder. So that's the gap if you like," he told RNZ's Morning Report on Tuesday.
"So we're calling for a more equitable level of funding going towards kaupapa Māori organisations."
While individual programmes have seen impressive funding boosts - Wano singling out the Access and Choice programme, which helped people with "mild-to-moderate mental health and addiction needs".
The share of its funding that went to kaupapa Māori providers rose from about 10 percent in 2019 to 20 percent now.
"That's a direction that's been set and we're encouraging for that trend to continue."
But it was not just about money, Wano said: "It's about the way that we go about commissioning for those services.
"So we're advocating for Māori communities, iwi, hapū, kaupapa Māori providers to be actively engaged in the process of design. And we've seen some of that in the Access and Choice approach. There's been a different approach taken there and as a result of that we're seeing an increasing uptake, building the capability of service providers in that area.
"So it's a good example. So, you know, there is hope within this process. And again, we're encouraging just more of that to happen and replicate that more across, across the motu."