It was billed as the year everything would be better \u2013 but 2025 been a huge year for counsellors with almost half now facing waiting lists for people needing help.<\/p>\n
The national body representing 3500 counsellors said demand is high, and the issues people have are now a lot more complex.<\/p>\n
New Zealand Association of Counsellors president Huhana Pene, said: “They’re so busy that they\u2019ve had to cap it and close the books off for new intake of clients, so that leaves people waiting even more.”<\/p>\n
Sarah Maindonald is a counsellor at Purapura Whetu in Christchurch. The kaupapa M\u0101ori health trust was established in 2002, and is a wellbeing and social service provider combining clinical, cultural, and community support.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a collaboration of eight different agencies and they are just all full to the brim. We had the highest referral rate in October of 265 young people, which has been the highest since 2023,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A New Zealand Association of Counsellors workforce survey showed the main reasons for people seeking help in 2025 were for anxiety or stress (83%), trauma and PTSD (70%), family or relationship support (59%), and depression (50%) \u2013 with most experiencing many of these issues.<\/p>\n
Pene said: “These issues are not new, but the level of high risk, severity and complexity have definitely increased.”<\/p>\n
Maindonald said there were some simple ways people could help themselves through the holiday season \u2013 take some time away from the electronic devices.<\/p>\n
“It’s turned into a fiasco of buying. Don\u2019t get sucked into that. It\u2019s actually about connecting with people \u2013 so much better to connect with your family, or neighbours or connect to your community.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was billed as the year everything would be better \u2013 but 2025 been a huge year for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-235278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}