KEY POINTS:
A national web of mental health workers as extensive as New Zealand's network of GPs is needed to meet the country's mental health problems, an expert says.
New Zealand's health system was too focused on physical symptoms and needed a huge overhaul to tackle mainstream mental health problems, AUT's Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Max Abbott said.
Huge progress had been made in the last 20 years on improving care for acute mental health problems, he said.
But there was still a massive divide between the level of care and funding for physical ailments and those for common mental conditions, including depression and anxiety.
"There's definitely not the same level. I don't think anybody could challenge the fact that we just simply don't have the mental health emphasis in primary care that we do on physical health. We definitely need to."
Depression was expected to be the second biggest disease burden world-wide after heart disease by 2020, he said.
The problem had been recognised by the Government, which introduced pilot schemes providing extra publicly funded services for patients with mild to moderate mental health disorders.
"I'm aware the GPs and primary health care people can't anywhere near meet the requests they're getting for the pilot projects they've set up," he said.
While the programmes had been popular and showed an understanding by Government, they needed to be rolled out nationwide, and quickly.
"They need to be sustained and carried forward. It's really critical."
Such a shift in focus would mean a huge change in allocation of health dollars, and probably an increase in overall health spending, he said.
But there would be savings, too.
A number of physical health problems would be picked up during mental health appointments, many families' home life would be improved by a reduction in mental health concerns, and work productivity would increase across the country, he said.
"Of course there's a strong link between mental health and physical health too.
"So if these matters were being dealt with effectively, with a range of interventions, they would also have positive spin-off for physical health as well as social functioning, absences from work, and work performance."
Professor Abbott said a good gauge of how many public health mental health workers were needed would be comparable to the number of GPs throughout the country.
