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Middlemore Hospital’s emergency department has seen a surge in patients this month due to winter respiratory viruses such as influenza, as well as COVID-19.
photo: LDR/Stephen Forbes
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey has announced that five hospital emergency departments (EDs) will trial mental health and addiction peer support services.
The program requires peer support specialists in emergency rooms to provide mental health support to patients and connect them to community services after they are discharged, regardless of how they ultimately ended up in the hospital.
The trial will be run this year in hospitals in Auckland City, Middlemore, Waikato, Wellington region and Christchurch, starting in September.
Over the next year, the trial will be rolled out in three more emergency departments, a slight departure from the initial plan to run the trial in four hospitals each year.
The service already operates at Nelson Hospital and Ducey said its success in supporting patients with mental health issues had led to its wider rollout.
He said he had seen the program in action there firsthand and it had been “incredibly successful.”
“It’s a proven program that our Government wants to roll out across New Zealand so more people can benefit from the services they provide,” he said.
“I firmly believe that the ideas to address mental health issues already exist in the field, they just need the opportunity to be supported.”
Ducey First The program was announced in MarchEach hospital costs between $300,000 and $500,000, with funding coming from the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s Te Whatu Ora program.
At the time, he said the emergency department had become a bottleneck, with at least 13,000 people with mental health issues coming in for crisis support each year.
The program is supported by Te Hiringa Mahara, the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission.
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