Johnandali
Some years ago, we used to have mental hospitals in New Zealand. They treated people with mental problems, and the hospitals were kept secure so that patients could not escape and cause problems. From what I have been told, these hospitals served our country well. They kept people with mental problems off the streets. They fed them. They housed them. They treated them. But also from what I’ve been told, a Labour government decided to close all the mental hospitals down.
Psychiatrist Fraser McDonald served as the medical superintendent at both Carrington and Kingseat hospitals in Auckland. He warned of the risks, as well as advantages, of phasing out psychiatric hospital services in place of community care.
‘Let there be no misunderstanding, if these social structures are to be established and are seen as utterly essential for the proper healthy development of community psychiatry they … will need to involve at least as much money and as many people as have been involved in creating and maintaining the old institutions. To do anything less will be false economy of the cruellest kind.’
teara.govt.nz
They put patients into houses in residential areas, with a nurse to keep an eye on them. And then the system fell apart. Many of the patients apparently ended up in hostels. No supervision. No control. Poorly fed. Unemployed. Drugged and intoxicated. And now, do you even hear of any houses that have a number of mental patients in them with a nurse to look after them? Not to my knowledge. And we’re being told that most beggars on our streets have mental problems.
The transition to a system of community-based services became very complex and messy as it coincided with several waves of health sector restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s. The rapid growth and spread of multiple agencies – public, private and voluntary, local, regional, national, and culturally-based – funded under different contracts to provide aspects of care and support lacked coordination and certainty of outcomes.
Patients, families of patients, and carers were caught in the cracks, and there were harrowing and occasionally tragic tales of poor communication, missed opportunities, poor support, lack of continuity of care and unsuitable placements.
teara.govt.nz
Now a Labour coalition government clearly want to get rid of our prison system. After all, it’s racist due to the fact that a very large proportion of inmates are Maori or Pasifika. The courts are giving people prison sentences far in excess of what they deserve or need. Is the next step the abolition of prisons with groups of inmates put into houses in residential areas with a supervisor? It wouldn’t surprise me one little bit.
But what does worry me is why the National Party didn’t reinstate mental hospitals. Is there something wrong with our politicians? Are they totally out of touch with what’s going on? Are our politicians ever going to ban criminal gangs or decree that gangs will be put under severe restrictions and supervision and that any gang member found manufacturing or selling drugs, or with an unlicenced firearm will get life without parole? Or are they just going to continue to turn a blind eye into what’s going on in this country?
Perhaps we could start by introducing legislation that any person deported from another country for criminal reasons will be kept on an isolated island for a period of five years before being allowed back into the community. A deterrent.
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