20 September, 2004

Turner: Anti-depressant/youth suicide link needs exploring

An upcoming meeting at which New Zealand authorities will look at requiring warning labels on anti-depressants for young people raises the broader issue of this country's imbalanced reliance on drugs to address mental health issues, United Future's Judy Turner said today.

"We need to ask some hard questions about how much of the ring-fenced health budget is spent on medical responses, to the exclusion of counselling and cognitive and psycho-therapies," Mrs Turner, United Future health spokeswoman, said.

"Every answer is not found in a pill bottle - and just as pointedly, international experience has strongly linked anti-depressants and youth suicides.

"This is a serious issue that needs to be further explored," Mrs Turner said.

"We might well find that mental health funding would be more effective if it followed the client, rather than the Government determining what they will and will not fund," she said.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>