\u201cWe have been told by young people about the challenges they face gaining access to support.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to ensure young people know where to seek help and when they do, there is capacity and workforce available to respond in a way that works for them and their circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Children and young people (aged 0-18) were most likely, compared with other age groups, to have their referral for specialist help declined (14.9%). Rates for other age groups were between 5-7%.<\/p>\n
Young people also faced the longest wait times for treatment, the report said, with 40% of children and teenagers waiting more than eight weeks for a third appointment (compared to 23% overall).<\/p>\n
M\u0101ori and Pacifika people had some of the highest rates of psychological distress among ethnic groups (22.5% and 23.8%, respectively).<\/p>\n
Over the past five years, the report also shows a significant increase in the rate of disabled adults experiencing high levels of psychological distress (26.7% in 2019\/2020 to 35.5% in 2024\/25).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe data we have gathered clearly shows that the system is less responsive to the high level of mental-health need of M\u0101ori, Pacific and disabled people,\u201d Orsborn said.<\/p>\n
Options needed to be available that are tailored for these young people to enable better mental health and wellbeing outcomes, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s vitally important that we close this gap, and it is becoming more urgent. At a population level young people are reporting increasing levels of psychological distress,\u201d Orsborn said. In its summary of New Zealand Health Survey 2024-25 data, she said, \u201cthe trend of increasing high levels of psychological distress is not slowing down\u201d <\/p>\n
Matt Doocey, the country\u2019s first-ever Mental Health Minister, has released a series of mental health initiatives this year including support for rural and grassroots entities.<\/p>\n
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe have been told by young people about the challenges they face gaining access to support. \u201cWe\u2019ve got…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[432,579,5842,115,2371,5504,2082,134,15221,700,1885,554,555,111,139,69,90,35481,384,2887,1560,1321,13109,29756,25444,1297,25152,4741,1079,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-300615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-action","9":"tag-addiction","10":"tag-calling","11":"tag-calls","12":"tag-commission","13":"tag-following","14":"tag-for","15":"tag-health","16":"tag-improve","17":"tag-latest","18":"tag-mental","19":"tag-mental-health","20":"tag-mentalhealth","21":"tag-new-zealand","22":"tag-newzealand","23":"tag-nz","24":"tag-on","25":"tag-particularly","26":"tag-people","27":"tag-release","28":"tag-report","29":"tag-services","30":"tag-several","31":"tag-statistics","32":"tag-urgent","33":"tag-wellbeing","34":"tag-wrong","35":"tag-young","36":"tag-youth","37":"tag-zealand"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300615","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=300615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}