I was gonna leave this topic to give people a chance to talk rather than me continue to be a knowit all interweb self appointed mental health expert.
You are absolutely correct.
I understand why people would question why mental health is different and we should just continue to view it as one specialty under the health umbrella with no special attention over other areas.
No blood test or Xray or scan will tell you what the disorder is. It takes time, you cannot have certainty in some cases for years, which is why peoples diagnosis can change from depression to be re labelled bipolar, from bipolar to being re branded Schizophrenic.
There is no way at the moment around that, because part of what informs the diagnosis is how the patient responds to the myriad of different medication classes.
Also some diseases start out looking the same.
The truth about why mental health lags is the stigma, in the greater health care arena clinicians who are not mental health trained are afraid of mental health patients.
They can even be a little awkward around Psych staff too, till they get a lot of exposure to how they roll. When I first got called up to Major general hospitals to a mental health crisis in the general medicine/surgical arena the Nurse were very stand offish, and we had a hard time getting them to engage and change attitudes.
Happy to say we did have some good outcomes where you would show up and the medical nurses (we called them 'real nurses', a black humor sarcastic mental health in joke) anyway you would show up and they would be like Denzel Washington just walked into the building to size up the crises.
So they learnt to really respect the expertise of MH staff.
This is a society wide human condition, to fear what we do not understand, everyone is a little bit or a lot scared of crazy.
Therefore Mental health units are built away from the main general hospital buildings, usually down the back, out of sight, out of mind, and this attitude in health care, this prejudice is systemic and profound.
There are other reason but I am sure no one is interested in hearing all of it.
Taking a step back, and imagining this minister is going to be good, it would help to know whether this is being driven by the fact that the mental health pandemic is exploding and that the new Govt realise that they need to take the issues on.
However I lose heart with that generous view, when I consider how complex day to day life with a mental illness is, the need for financial support, housing, supervision in some cases.
Unlike other illnesses, while you are in 'remission' your medication side effects commonly make things like work a pipe dream, because pills can impair concentration, memory, etc.
So to use Tragics analogy about a diabetic, when a diabetic is stable, they can work, keep a home, look after themselves, negotiate with WINZ.
Mental health clients have to go to WINZ and try to read those deliberately difficult benefit applications and when the WINZ monkey says 'you only qualify for partial support' which is an in house lie led by the Ministry to cut costs.....the mental health patient will go away with inadequate money to eat or pay rent, they will feel suicidal, and in some cases homocidal and go back and kill WINZ staff.
The shitter of it is, some of these people are unable to get the money they are entitled to, purely because of the drugs the Mental health system is giving them, I cannot imagine a more unfair unjust punishment for being sick.
The only good thing I can see about a minister that is realistic to hope for, is that they stand over the DHB boards and say listen fuckers, this fifty million is not allowed to be siphoned off anymore, that shit is stopping now.
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