Helen Buckland: Clinical Psychologist Doctor on new 5-year plan for suicide prevention

Uncertainty on the Government's action plan for suicide prevention.

Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey's unveiled a five-year approach for addressing high suicide rates. 

The new Suicide Prevention Plan includes strengthening the workforce, targeting higher-risk populations, and improving community care. 

Clinical Psychologist Doctor Helen Buckland told Ryan Bridge there's been a lot of thought, but more needs to be done.

She says it's not a suicide prevention plan, it's a response plan, for people who are already suicidal.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got a five year suicide prevention plan from the
Mental Health Minister yesterday to tackle our stubbornly high suicide rates,
six crisis cafes and new suicide prevention community funded coming
by the end of the year. Doctor Helen Buckland is
a clinical psychologist with me this morning. Good morning, Hi Ryan,
Hi you good good, thank you. But I'm quite cynical

(00:20):
and I can't help but feel like I've heard this
all before and crisis cafes. Are we kidding?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
You know?

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Is this actually going to make a difference.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Well, I'm a cynic as well. I think there has
been you know, there's been a lot of thought and
I can see that there's a will to try and
improve with this plan. But in reality, it is not
a suicide prevention plan. It is a suicide response plan.
It's for people who are already suicidal, and there's no
reference to tackling the causes that lead people to becoming

(00:53):
suicidal in the first place, and I think that that's
where the focus of a prevention plan should be.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
So this is the part where you talk about poverty
and you talk about cost of living and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Right, yes, But also I think that we also need
to have a look at things like bullying in schools,
effective child protection services, and also so the impact of
social media on children. So I think that Minnesota, he
needs to go back to the drawing board and come

(01:25):
up with something a bit better than that's personally well.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
They are looking at banning social media for kids. That's
got one thing, I suppose. But what about with poverty,
because this is always something that people and psychologists and
people in the field say, poverty is the problem, right,
what is it? Why do so many more men than
women in their life? If it's poverty.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I think some of the reasons around that are because
of the expectation that men are providers for their families,
and so some of these traditional gender roles that you
have around what men are meant to do and be
and in the face of actually being really difficult to
find jobs that are going to be covering the cost

(02:09):
of living and there are enough to take care of
your family, that is just devastating if one of your
primary ways of thinking about yourself is taking care of
your family. So we know that that's one of the issues.
And I think the other thing, especially for young men
who are leaving school and if school wasn't their favorite place,

(02:30):
and they're a little bit more hands on and want
to do practical things. What are their job prospects when
they leave? What kind of money are they going to
be earning when they leave so that they can go ahead,
leave school, get out into the world and have jobs
that are actually going to give them enough so that
they can feel confident about moving forward in their lives

(02:53):
with enough money in their back pocket to have a
night out with their friends and look of buying home
and having a family.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
So, Helen, I had a look at the numbers this
morning from OECD. There are plenty of countries out there
with high poverty rates, higher poverty rates than us, but
lowest suicide rates. How do we explain that?

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well, I think one of the things that it comes
back to is about what children experience. In New Zealand
in terms of abuse, we have some of the worst
rates for family harm and exposure for children to abuse
in the home, and so I do think that we
need to go back to when people are young and

(03:36):
address those issues and alongside issues like poverty as well.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
All right, really appreciate your time this morning, Helen. Thank
you very much for that. Doctor Helen Interesting, Doctor Helen Buckland,
clinical psychologist, on the government's plan for more.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
From earlier edition with Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
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