Office of the Director of Mental Health and Addiction Services Annual Report 2017

Published online: 
25 February 2019
Office of the Director of Mental Health Annual Report 2017.

The Office of the Director of Mental Health and Addiction Services’ annual report presents information and statistics that serve as indicators of quality for our mental health services. Active monitoring of services is vital to ensuring New Zealanders are receiving quality mental health care.

This annual report reflects on the continual evolution of mental health and addiction care in New Zealand. In 2017, one key example was a change in addiction treatment legislation, whereby the Substance Addiction (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 2017 replaced the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Act 1966.

In 2017 a record number of people accessed specialist mental health and addiction services. This increase is consistent with international trends, and has occurred in the context of population growth, improved non-governmental organisation reporting, growing social awareness and increasingly open discussion of mental health issues.

It is positive that more New Zealanders are seeking and receiving mental health care, but services are experiencing increasing pressure. We must continue to ensure that services are best placed to respond to the changing needs of the populations they serve.

This report is divided into three main sections.

  1. Context – an overview of the legislative and service delivery contexts in which the Office operates.
  2. Activities for 2017 – the work carried out by the Office in 2017.
  3. Ensuring service quality – statistical information on the use of compulsory mental health assessment and treatment, seclusion, family/whānau consultation, electroconvulsive therapy, reportable deaths, suicide and opioid substitution treatment during 2017.

Publishing information

  • Date of publication:
    25 February 2019
  • ISBN:
    Print: 978-1-98-856843-0, Online: 978-1-98-856844-7
  • HP number:
    6999
  • Citation:
    Ministry of Health. 2019. Office of the Director of Mental Health and Addiction Services Annual Report 2017. Wellington: Ministry of Health.
  • Ordering information:
    Only soft copy available to download
  • Copyright status:

    Owned by the Ministry of Health and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.

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