Five mental health and addiction targets for the health system
The Minister for Mental Health has announced 5 mental health and addiction targets which provide clear expectations for health system performance. They are intended to improve outcomes for people with mental health and addiction needs, as well as supporting people to stay well.
The mental health targets will drive faster access to primary and specialist mental health and addiction services, shorter stays in emergency departments, workforce growth and a stronger focus on prevention and early intervention.
Implementation of the target programme will start immediately but work is needed to improve data collection, quality and completeness. As some of these measures are new, monitoring and reporting will become more robust and complete over time.
Monitoring of mental health and addiction targets sits within a wider suite of monitoring of health system performance by the Ministry. These targets are key measures in the Government Policy Statement on Health 2024–2027.
Mental health and addiction target results
Health New Zealand will publish results against the targets every quarter.
The first results, covering the July-September period (quarter one of 2024/25) were published on 13 December 2024 and can be found on Health New Zealand’s website.
