An Auckland man has died and a Christchurch man was treated in hospital after violent incidents this week involving mental health patients, one carrying a knife, the other an axe.
The father of a man wounded in the Auckland attack has joined public calls for mental health patients to be kept in hospital, accusing health chiefs of closing hospital beds to save money.
In a damning review of Canterbury mental health services, the Mental Health Commission has found inpatient services are overcrowded and its community services under-developed. Commission advice to Health Minister Pete Hodgson has warned that mental health problems are on the rise, yet services remained patchy.
"If access to services does not improve and people experiencing mental ill health are denied essential services, the result will be longer and more severe experiences of mental illness, greater likelihood of relapse, more severe life disruptions, impacts on employment and family relationships, self-harm and suicide," the advice paper says.
"Delivering good services when they are needed encourages less demand for high-cost mental health services less often, for shorter periods and more often on a voluntary basis."
In 2003, the commission, which monitors district health boards (DHBs), said overcrowding at Hillmorton Hospital's inpatient unit was "a critical issue" for the Canterbury DHB.
Two years on, commissioner Ruth Harrison has visited Canterbury to find its inpatient services still overcrowded and its community services under-developed.
In a letter, released to The Press under the Official Information Act, Harrison called for "significant investment" in community services.
"The overcrowding is a symptom of the lack of other services available in the community and this needs to be addressed with significant investment and with the development of more or new services in order to make any difference."
The Press has highlighted the crisis at Hillmorton's acute inpatient unit, Te Awakura, where staff are regularly forced to care for more patients than they have beds. Patients must then be moved at the end of each day for sleepovers in other units, sometimes travelling as far as Timaru.
Debate has raged over whether Te Awakura needs more beds or whether users need better support in the community. Half of all its female patients are readmitted within a month of being discharged.
Psychiatric Consumer Trust manager Colin Slade said no matter how many hospital beds there were "they would always be filled. The logical place to tackle the problem is at the community end."
Hospitals could be quite distressing for people in a crisis. "When you need hospital care, you need peace and quiet and good support and relaxation, and, especially when there's overcrowding, it's not like that."
Home support did not necessarily require highly skilled, highly trained people, said Slade.
"Somebody that could come in and cook a meal and maybe sit with somebody through a long evening ... it does make a significant difference."
CDHB mental health services general manager Vince Barry said there were no plans to reduce hospital bed numbers in Canterbury's acute or specialist units.
An announcement would be made before Christmas on new funding for more community-based crisis respite.
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