Open Letter to Minister of Health on Mental Health issues

Open Letter to Minister of Health regarding Mental Health issues, from family of Nicky Stevens

Dear Minister Coleman

We have read with interest your speech and media statements today regarding the Government’s decision to increase spending on mental health services, and your acknowledgement that “more needs to be done”.

After our son Nicky Stevens died in March 2015 while in the legal care of the Waikato DHB’s mental health unit, a totally avoidable death, you refused to meet with us to discuss what could be done to improve mental health care. We are pleased that you now agree that lessons need to be learnt from serious events and complaints.

We wish, however, to point out to you that there are many systemic problems that make it hard to learn from serious events. The problems include:

• A Coronial inquest system that moves at a glacial pace – in our son’s case, after over two years, we have been given no date for, or even surety of, an inquest hearing, while some families have been waiting well over 5 years;

• An uneven playing field in terms of legal representation of patients and their families – where DHB’s, other health services, other Government Departments, and involved health staff all have taxpayer-funded legal representation, but patients and their families have no public support at all;

• A DHB serious incident review process that is not independent – where DHB staff, and persons they appoint, review their organisation’s own actions, and patients and their families are given no rights of involvement;

• A Health and Disability Commission that will not investigate serious incidents until after Coronial and DHB processes are complete, causing extremely long delays.

We note that there has been a 71% increase in mental health treatments (98,000 up to 168,000) required since 2013, and point out that

• The increase in spending does not match the level of increased demand;

• Police and social service agencies are also facing significant increased pressure as a result of mental health issues in the community;

• Our family, and many other families and other concerned people in the community, have been communicating with you for some years in order to point out the dramatically increasing needs in the area of mental health services.

While we applaud your current interest in these subjects, and thank you for today’s announcements, we urge you to consider a full review of this country’s mental health system. Announcing such a review would gain the Government considerable plaudits in a community that is becoming increasingly concerned about a wide range of mental health issues.

We look forward to your response.

Regards

Jane Stevens & Dave Macpherson

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