“A recent Government-commissioned report to assess the
progress made on their 2019 $1.9 billion mental health
initiative is being hampered by lemming-like beliefs and
assumptions that risk tipping the entire $1.9 billion over
an ideological cliff,” says Stephen Taylor, a private
Social Services Outcomes Reviewer and Mental Health
Spokesman for New Conservative.
“Since 1994, there
have been fifty reports into the status of mental health in
New Zealand, none of which are very favourable, so we are
not suffering from a deficit of data.
What we lack
in the mental health space in New Zealand is demonstrable
evidence of outcomes, that being knowing what works and what
doesn’t in mental health service delivery.
“There
also seems to be an almost obsessive avoidance by
stakeholders and mental health service delivery providers to
meaningfully engage in routine client outcome measurement of
service provision,” says Mr Taylor.
“If the
powers-that-be were to engage with what now presents as over
seventy years of international mental health outcome
research, they would quickly discover where the cliff edges
in their thinking and assumptions were located, particularly
so when it comes to what it takes to adequately staff the
mental health sector.
“For example,
- it only
takes around fifty hours to train someone to work
competently in a mental health role; - ethnicity of
workers contribute precisely nothing to improving client
outcomes for any particular ethnicity; - more than
enough mental health worker capacity to meet demand already
exists in the private mental health and counselling sector,
but is as yet untapped; - qualification type,
professional registration or membership, clinical
supervision, or time working in the sector all make no
difference to attaining positive client outcomes for mental
health service users; - Telehealth service delivery
matches the efficacy of face-to-face mental health
intervention.
“None of the above evidential
realisations are being properly prioritised in mental health
service delivery in New Zealand; rather, like lemmings, good
money funds poor policy and sans-evidence based practices,
which throws clients in crisis off the mental service
delivery cliff,” says Mr Taylor.
“If we are not
formally engaging with mental health outcome literature, nor
formally measuring mental health outcomes, then we are
guessing, assuming, or even hoping for positive
outcomes.
“We are just not achieving positive
outcomes, and we won’t whilst we keep flocking to mental
health sector thinking and practices that haven’t worked,
will never work, and which result in dropping clients in
crisis into a mental health service delivery abyss,“
concludes Mr
Taylor.
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