Health/mental health systems and strategy

Our submission welcomes the development of a long-term Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy to maintain national focus and momentum on improving mental health, wellbeing and addiction outcomes across Aotearoa New Zealand. We support the Strategy’s emphasis on prevention and early intervention, youth mental health, workforce development, lived experience leadership, and building a more connected continuum of care.

However, we consider the draft Strategy underdeveloped in several critical areas. We are calling for stronger commitments to Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations and kaupapa Māori approaches, greater focus on primary prevention and the wider determinants of wellbeing, clearer governance and accountability mechanisms, and a more robust implementation, monitoring and evaluation framework.

The Ministry of Social Development has consulted on a new Carers’ Strategy Action Plan, following the expiry of the previous plan in 2023. Carers are people who support friends, family, whānau and aiga members with a disability, illness, or health condition – including mental health and addiction challenges.

While the MHF supports the idea of a rolling plan that can respond quickly and flexibly to need, the draft lacks urgency and real action. Many deliverables are vague, with no clear accountabilities, timelines, or corresponding funding.

Carers are doing it tough, experiencing significantly higher rates of anxiety, loneliness, and poor health – especially young carers. Support isn’t reaching people either, with many not even realising they’re considered as “carers”, and services are either hard to find or don’t exist. 

Carers need real support now, including respite, financial help, and recognition of their own needs (not just the person they care for). A stronger focus on equity is also needed, including meaningful support for Māori carers and whānau.

On 19 February 2026 the Minister for Mental Health, Hon. Matt Doocey, received a joint letter and petition signed by 19,615 New Zealanders. Together, we called on the Government to take urgent action to address poor child and youth mental health rates.

The petition urges both immediate, and long-term steps to ensure that young New Zealanders can access the timely, effective mental health supports they need — and deserve.  

For too long, young people have had the highest rates of mental health challenges in the country, yet waited the longest for support. This collective action reflects a growing, nationwide demand for meaningful change. 

The MHF's petition, launched in October 2025, calls on the Minister for Mental Health to take urgent action on child and youth mental health. As of 12 December, we have received over 14,000 signatures of support for this petition, from a range of concerned New Zealanders. The petition will remain open into early 2026. This letter invites the Minister to formally respond to our petition's request for urgent action and reaffirms our commitment to engage with the public on this issue until we are satisfied an adequate response is forthcoming.

Our chief executive Shaun Robinson has laid down a wero to the Minister of Mental Health, Matt Doocey, to deliver an integrated, whole-of-system mental health and wellbeing implementation plan within one year to coincide with Budget 2025.

The plan must outline the Government’s commitment to a clear timeline for change, with sequenced actions, and designated people responsible for delivering work to secure the confidence of the sector and the public.

In this submission to the Parliamentary Health Committee, the Mental Health Foundation recommends this Bill be rejected because it removes:

• most of the legal mechanisms that support an equal Te Tiriti o Waitangi-based partnership with Māori, including the expression of tino rangatiratanga and equitable outcomes
• the health sector's focus on protecting and promoting health and wellbeing; equally prioritising mental and physical health; and valuing the views of people with lived experience of mental health challenges.

The Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand (MHF) welcomes the establishment of this strategy to address inequities of health outcomes for women and gender diverse communities. 

This submission is to the Pae Ora Legislation Committee on the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill. The Bill outlines the new structures and accountabilities in the health system. Our submission makes several recommendations to strengthen the Bill including recommending a focus on wellbeing, and to require for a mental health, addiction and wellbeing strategy in the Bill. 

Developing a Mental Health and Addiction System and Service Framework is one of the key actions recommended by Kia Manawanui Aotearoa – Long-term pathway to mental wellbeing. As the light bearer for delivery of the mental health and addiction transformation within the new health system, the System and Service Framework will be one of the most important tools employed to ensure the locality approach does in fact take a broad approach to mental wellbeing and decision makers place the mental wellbeing of their community at the forefront of actions.

In our letter to the Ministry of Health, we argue that the System and Service Framework should emphasise prevention and mental wellbeing more strongly, provide a phased action plan with clear accountability mechanisms, include an explicit action to address/eliminate racism, and align with and reinforce related strategic documents and frameworks such as the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission’s He Ara Āwhina monitoring framework and He Tapu te Oranga o ia Tangata (the national suicide prevention strategy and action plan) as well as the incoming new mental health legislation.

The Act and Code were established to ensure that people are treated as partners in their care and have help to resolve issues, and hold people accountable when this doesn’t happen. 

The Act sets out what the HDC can do, including how complaints can be resolved, and the Code sets out people’s rights when using health and disability services. Everyone who uses these services has rights, and everyone who provides a service must uphold these rights.

Our submission outlines MHF's overall support for the intention of the review. However, we make several recommendations regarding:

• supporting better and more equitable complaint resolution,
• making the Act and Code work better for tāngata whaikaha | disabled people (especially around supported decision-making and the right to an advance directive), and
• making the Act and Code more effective for, and responsive to the needs of, Māori.

Perinatal mental distress can affect women and birthing parents significantly with Māori, Pacific and women of Asian descent being disproportionately affected. The MHF supports this Amendment Bill as it will provide new mothers and birthing parents an opportunity to rest and recover after having a baby which will support positive mental health outcomes for new parents and their wider whānau. The MHF recommends that the infrastructure to support this law change be applied and that workforce pressures in the maternity sector are addressed to ensure this law change can be implemented. The MHF also recommends that this Bill includes options for the same level of care to be provided for women and birthing parents after late pregnancy loss and still birth.

We recommend the strategy be strengthened by:

• Be inclusive of all disabled people in definition and scope
• Clarify how the strategy will progress existing government commitments and action relating to people with psychosocial disabilities
• What pae ora (healthy futures) looks like to people with experience of mental illness/distress 
• Prioritise the mental health of people with disabilities, particularly young people with disabilities
• Disabled people who experience mental health and addiction-related needs have been caught between disability and mental health sectors, often resulting in them unable to access the support they need.

The MHF outline concerns the overall structure, aspirations and outcomes in the draft framework reflect and reinforce the dominant medical model of mental health. The MHF recommend He Ara Āwhina include visible and clear aspirations and outcomes for tāngata whaiora and whānau to be supported to apply strategies to live well, and to experience positive mental wellbeing; and to clarify the scope of the framework in this regard. 

The MHF are supportive of the intention of the code and make a number of recommendations to clarify its scope and application, better integrate Te Tiriti o Waitangi with the other values, name accountability structures and implementation pathways, and strengthen the language of the code.

This submission is to the Health Committee on the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) (Improving Mental Health Outcomes) Amendment Bill.

The Bill seeks to mandate a national mental health and wellbeing strategy. Our submission outlines MHF’s overall support for mandating a strategy of this nature in law. However, we make several recommendations for strengthening the Bill, including naming ‘addiction’ in the title of the strategy, requiring the strategy be developed in partnership with Māori and those with lived experience of mental distress and addiction, and in consultation with all entities that contribute to mental health and wellbeing (not just health entities). The submission also addresses various drafting concerns and implications and suggests how to maximise the impact of this Bill.

The MHF supports the intentions of this Bill to extend ACC cover to a specified list of maternal birth injuries. Birth injuries can cause anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and perinatal mental distress has far reaching and life-long consequences for pregnant people and parents, their tamariki and whānau.

The MHF recommend the Bill provide for ACC cover to mental injuries suffered as a result of physical birth injuries. We also acknowledge that all pregnant people and birth givers have the right to access to safe, timely and effective mental health services and support, regardless of whether they meet the criteria for ACC cover.

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.