Crisis support service Lifeline says a lack of funding is why it’s responding to less than half of mental health teleservice calls a year.
A review of services has found about half the calls made are abandoned, mainly due to long wait times.
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says he would like a target for calls to be connected within five to ten minutes, but he doesn’t know how much that would cost.
He also wants to start a dedicated 24/7 suicide prevention crisis line function.
The government was “acting swiftly to implement the findings of the review”, he said.
Lifeline’s general manager of social services Grenville Hendricks told Morning Report that demand for its services was increasing.
It received about 100,000 calls annually, but only managed to answer about 40 percent of them.
He said the report’s findings were not a surprise to providers, who had seen the problems for a long time.
It needed $4 million annually to operate.
He said without extra funding, meeting the growing demand would remain an ongoing concern.
All the providers competed against each other for funding and Hendricks wanted this changed.
“I actually think that we need an approach where we are way more collaborative …where providers recognise their specialities and are actually able to work together with others to work towards a common outcome which is how do we improve mental health across New Zealand.”
Hendricks said people called Lifeline because they knew they could stay anonymous, however callers were usually prepared to share their details if staff wanted to escalate their case and get the likes of St John Ambulance involved.
He didn’t see privacy as a problem but there needed to be a framework shared by all organisations working in the field. That way areas such as the sharing of information could be standardised.