Recently I was lucky enough to attend an event in Auckland held by the Suicide Prevention Office and Le Va, to commemorate World Suicide Prevention Day and celebrate the incredible mahi happening in this space. There were a range of speakers, including the Acting Director-General of Health, Dr Diana Sarfati, and a video from Minister Henare, Associate Minister of Health. A real highlight for me was seeing the LifeKeeper awards being presented to the many worthy recipients. These awards are for people quietly working in communities, making a real difference in suicide prevention efforts. Thank you to Le Va, Te Rau Ora, the team at the Suicide Prevention Office, and everyone involved in this work. You can watch a recording of the livestream on He Kāpehu Whetū, the Suicide Prevention Office website.
We are continuing to focus on a number of significant pieces of work within the Ministry, including repealing and replacing the Mental Health Act, and the System and Service Framework. There is information on both these initiatives in the newsletter below. There is also a lot of work happening within the Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy, and we’ll be sharing more on this soon.
Finally, I’m pleased to see that there continues to be discussion across the sector on recommendation 35 of He Ara Oranga, which encouraged “a national discussion to reconsider beliefs, evidence and attitudes about mental health and risk”. There was a productive panel discussion on risk at the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists conference last week, with Phyllis Tangitu and Hannah Whittaker-Komatsu offering excellent perspectives to broaden the clinical view. Manatū Hauora is keen to support this work and encourage people to start the discussion within their own organisations and communities.
Ngā mihi,
Arran
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