Ministry Of Health Remains Committed To Suicide Prevention

Robyn Shearer, Deputy Director-General, Clinical
Community and Mental Health: 

The
Ministry of Health remains committed to ensuring there is
strong and visible leadership of suicide prevention in any
new organisational structure and has provided that assurance
to the Minister of Mental
Health. 

The Minister has stated his
expectation that the Suicide Prevention Office remains open.
As a result, we are developing options to work through with
the Minister early next week. 

We
acknowledge we did not sufficiently brief the Minister of
Mental Health on our change proposals. The Ministry is sorry
for the confusion that this has caused. 

Mental
health, addiction and suicide prevention are health system
priorities. Following the health sector reforms, the roles
and functions across the Ministry of Health were changed and
programmes and services were transferred to other health
agencies. The Ministry of Health is the chief advisor to the
new Minister for Mental Health and leads a whole of
government approach to mental
wellbeing. 

About the Suicide Prevention
Office (SPO) 

The Suicide Prevention
Office (SPO) was established, as one of the recommendations
of He Ara Oranga, in 2019 to provide leadership and
stewardship for suicide prevention efforts. 

A
key focus of the Office was the ongoing implementation of
the Suicide Prevention Action Plan 2019–2024 for Aotearoa
New Zealand: He Tapu te Oranga and Budget 2019 suicide
prevention and postvention initiatives of $40m over four
years. 

This was a small team within the Mental
Health and Addiction directorate of the Ministry of Health.
It has never been a stand alone
office. 

Following the health reforms on 1 July
2022; budget, planning and commissioning functions for
suicide prevention and postvention initiatives moved to
Health New Zealand, which later transferred the programmes
and services of the work to Te Aka Whai Ora. 

The
Suicide Prevention Office remained within the Ministry of
Health, but with a focus on strategy, policy, regulation and
monitoring the outcomes achieved by the system as a whole.
The team responsible for these residual functions remained
within the Ministry of Health’s Clinical Community and
Mental Health directorate. 

The proposals that
Ministry of Health staff are being consulted on include
bringing together suicide prevention expertise with the
expertise of our lived experience, system insights and
clinical teams. The purpose of combining these skillsets is
to elevate the importance of suicide prevention within the
broader mental health work
programme. 

The Ministry has no further
comment and will not be providing
interviews.

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