Balance Whanganui has started on a programme of building relationships with Wanganui general practitioners, beginning with Aramoho Health Centre. "It's for people presenting with mental health issues," says Balance's Carla Langmead. "There are people who present to primary health, not asking for medication, but asking for help. It's not the GPs' jobs to know what's out there, who's doing what and where they can link people. They do their best and they do know quite a lot but they're not a navigation service. So there's been nowhere for people to go and a lot of the time they get put into secondary service and medicated."
Balance is the bridge in between, so Aramoho Health Centre is going to refer those who present with symptoms to Balance and they're going to find out what people need and either point them in the right direction or support them in-house, depending on their needs.
"It's a really exciting concept," says Carla. "This is our distinction in the community. Every staff member at Balance has had either a recognised mental health issue or addiction; so that imediately takes down barriers.
"We're not there to diagnose or tell people what to do but we are there to help them, to have conversations with people - and that's ultimately what Balance is about; intentional peer support. We want to offer hope and open up conversations where we can have a mutual connection."
Carla has been with Balance for almost three years.
"It's awesome. It's a very holistic approach to mental health. Whilst we're not against medication we're not going to encourage that to be anyone's first port of call either. We are there to support and offer encouraging hope. We learn from each other."
Although people can present themselves to Balance, most are referred by other agencies such as Community Mental Health, Paths, Pathways or WINZ and Balance works in partnership with DHB Community Mental Health Liason Service.
"For a little place, we do a lot," says Carla.
The relationship with GPs is something Balance would like to see spread across the city and district.
The involvement with Aramoho began when Dr Lachie Smith took the first step of referring a patient to Balance after a phone call inquiring if and how they could help. Balance saw the opportunity so Frank Bristol, Balance manager, and Carla had a meeting with the GPs and gave a presentation about what their organisation does.
"That led into the conversation about triage," says Carla. "They are just as excited; we're calling it an extended peer support consultation/navigation. It's about trying to understand what the person needs and what's happening to them a little bit more."
The staff at Balance spend a lot of time one-on-one with people. "We also do advocacy with people that need it," says Carla. Frank specialises more in system advocacy while the other staff will accompany people to WINZ, for example, if needed, or support them in other ways."
Frank has been with Balance since it began as a small bi-polar support group about 10 years ago and has been manager for seven years.
"Balance Whanganui has provided consumer leadership, consultation and liaison work for the DHB Mental Health and Addiction services since 2010," he says, "and increasingly is working with the Whanganui Regional Health Network to ensure Balance is a good resource to assist primary health services in their critical work. This work involves contributing to various higher level strategic planning and policy development and service improvement. Several of our staff are now trained in Co-design. Co-design is about consumers and providers partnering to improve services.
"One of the things in it is how do we facilitate a healthy community for everyone, because there are limits on what services can do. There's a strategic framework being developed and now we're putting the action steps into it.
" One of the overriding things is having a responsive first point of contact, so when a person seeks help they get landed at the place that can help them."
Frank is keen to avoid unnecessary medicalisation of life issues and preventing people from becoming "mental patients". "It's normalising life experiences. That's the whole idea of support services; it's closer to compassionate friendship than clinical services which are more about the expert / patient roles. Research shows that a compassionate friend is more effective than a psychotherapist."
