Matt Doocey: Mental Health Minister on the decreasing wait times for mental health services

Faster access to primary and specialist mental health and addiction care is having a flow-on effect. 

The latest data shows nearly 84% of people are accessing primary care within a week, surpassing the government's target, while 80.3% are accessing specialist support within three weeks. 

Some regions, including Northland, Gisborne and Nelson Marlborough don't meet either of the targets. 

Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey told Ryan Bridge the work continues, but it's good to see some signs of improvement. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Another target's update this morning. This one mental health fast
access to primary care achieved or beaten Specialist service metal beaten.
In the South Island, the number of people getting access
to primary support within a week jump from sixty six
percent to ninety one percent. This is called a four
e D wait times for mental health patients. Long way
to go. They're the same with staffing. Matt Docy, mental

(00:20):
Health Minister. Good morning ording Ryan. Are there fewer mental
people or is the system faster?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Well, the first thing I'd say just a big thank
you to the frontline mental health staff. They do an
amazing job and this is an ability to shine a
light on them. Look, there's still a long way to
go when you look at the veriability within the different
twenty health districts in New Zealand. But comes back to
what sort of country do we want to live in?

(00:47):
And that's why I've set targets one week for primary
mental health support and three week for specialists.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, but are you improving on some of these figures
because there are fewer people requiring them? Or is the
system faster?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
It's definitely faster. So if you look at a primary
mental health over the last four quarters, so we're going
to remember these are the first time we've ever set
targets for mental health in New Zealand. We've now got
twelve months worth of data. It does bounce around to
weep it, but if you look at primary mental health,
we're seeing a significant increase in numbers from around fifty

(01:22):
two thousand people are quarter up to but over sixty thousand.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
So the numbers of people needing help are going up
and you're able to get them through even faster than
when they were fewer.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Very much so, because when these targets increase, as in
the percentage of people are getting one week support or
three week, the inverse is happening, which means the wasting
time is actually going down, which means more people can
be seen. And when you think about mental health, it's
a real red flag for people to be stuck on
weightless and so actually timiness is important. So that's why

(01:59):
three out of the five targets are around access.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
How did these improvements compare to pre COVID, You know,
are we just getting back to where we were or
are we even better than that?

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Oh? The difficulty is this is the first time we've
set targets for mental health in New Zealand, so as
the first mental health minister when I came in to
set these targets. So now we've only got twelve months
versus worth of data. But just to be clear, I'm
not a target fundamentalist. For me, the magic of these
targets is to have a line in the sand and

(02:32):
work with my officials to say what worked well to
get us there, what didn't work so well, what can
we improve next time? And you get that continuous improvement approach.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
All of this. Does all of this mean that we'll
have fewer suicides?

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Well, ultimately what we want to do is ensure people
in distress get support as quick as possible and hopefully
that will lead to fewer suicides.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Because what's the rate of them. How many deaths are
ye by suicide in New Zealand?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Well, sadly last year we lost six hundred and seventeen kiwis.
We haven't got the latest provisional statistics that will come
out I think by the end of October.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
What would you like that to be? You know, you've
got to target all that.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
No, we don't have a target for our suicide numbers,
because clearly one suicide is too many. I think when
you look at the rate per population, you know we're
working for that to be declining.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Matt to see mental health Mint's Appreciate your time. For
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