Policy positions and submissions

The Mental Health Foundation welcomes the draft Disability Strategy's focus on improving outcomes for disabled people, and its role in giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

We recommend the Strategy be strengthened by:

• Showing clearer support for people with long-term mental health challenges, neurodivergence and other cognitive impairments
• Detailing explicit actions to improve the mental health and wellbeing of all disabled people
• Adopting the Enabling Good Lives principles
• Strengthening its commitments to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and
• Providing clarity on how its proposed actions will be assigned, resourced and measured.

The Mental Health Foundation fully supports the passing of this Bill. This is because people experiencing mental distress are more likely to experience drug-related harms, including overdose, and we support a health-based, harm reduction approach to drug regulation that reduces these harms for tangata whaiora.

The protections provided by this Bill have the potential to save lives, as they would provide reassurance that people seeking emergency assistance for someone experiencing an overdose will not be arrested for calling for help. This will enable timely medical intervention and create opportunities for people to access further support and treatment.

The MHF strongly opposes the passage of this Bill. We are concerned the introduction of move-on orders would increase instability for people experiencing homelessness, many of whom are already living with mental health and addiction challenges. Rather than addressing the underlying causes of housing insecurity and homelessness, the Bill risks disrupting access to support networks and services and creating additional barriers to recovery and wellbeing.

Instead of criminalising homelessness, we support the resourcing and implementation of measures such as housing-first solutions and wrap-around health and social supports, which are far more effective at improving wellbeing outcomes for individuals and communities.

The Mental Health Foundation strongly opposes the passing of this Bill, because it would diminish the legal recognition, dignity, and human rights of transgender, gender-diverse, takatāpui, and intersex people in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This Bill does not address any clear or evidenced harm or offer any meaningful public benefit. Instead, it risks worsening marginalisation and exclusion for groups that already experience significantly poorer mental health outcomes resulting from higher levels of prejudice and discrimination – especially young people who belong to these communities. Recognition, inclusion, and belonging are essential foundations for mental wellbeing. Laws that deny people's identities and attempt to narrow recognition of human diversity risk causing significant harm to mental health.

The Mental Health Foundation is pleased to see that mental health and wellbeing is a foundational concept in the draft Health Education curriculum for students in Years 11 to 13. However, we are concerned at the removal of Māori and other cultural perspectives on health and wellbeing from the curriculum, and the lack of inclusive information about relationship, gender, sex, and sexuality topics. We would like to see the draft curriculum amended to adequately cover these topics, and for the 2022 mental health education guide to be retained when the new curriculum is in place (to support schools to implement a "whole-of-school" approach to mental health education).