Quarter of young people report high levels of psychological distress - report

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission’s latest report has found nearly a quarter of young people reported high levels of psychological distress in the month before the survey.

Their access to specialist services has also decreased, alongside high rates of declined referrals.

The data also shows high unmet need for Māori, with no meaningful increases in funding for those services.

In 2024-25, 14 percent of people aged 15 years and over had experienced “high” or “very high” psychological distress in the four weeks prior to the survey, equivalent to 609,000 people - more than double the rate seen a decade ago.

Some groups experienced much higher rates of psychological distress, including Māori (22.5 percent), Pacific peoples (24 percent), young people (23 percent) and disabled people (35.5 percent).

It found young people also experienced much higher rates of intentional self-harm requiring hospitalisation - nearly three times the overall average at 370 young people per 100,000.

The commission/Te Hiringa Mahara’s chief executive, Karen Orsborn, said their distress was driven by factors like online harm and the global environment. “It’s the world that young people live in.”

Access to specialist services had decreased, and young people who did not live near one of the country’s three youth facilities were still being admitted to adult facilities, which weren’t best able to support their needs.

But positively, access to primary and community services had improved - the government surpassed its target of seeing 80 percent of primary care patients within a week.

There had also been an increase in staff, thanks to focused attention on growing numbers and increasing diversity, Orsborn said.

The data stopped at June 2025, and since then, there had been investment in these kinds of services which would improve access over time.

But overall, access to specialist services was still tracking below pre-Covid levels, she said. “Covid had a significant impact on people and on services and the workforce,” she said.

Seclusion rates still too high, report finds

The report noted seclusion, otherwise known as solitary confinement, was often a traumatising experience.

Minimising its use in mental health facilities had been government policy for more than a decade, it said, with the goal of reducing rates in mental health and addiction adult inpatient settings to less than three percent by June 2025.

Despite reductions, the number of people subject to seclusion remained too high - and the Ministry of Health reported that Māori in adult inpatient services were 6.6 times more likely to be secluded than non-Māori.

The report makes three recommendations:

• That Health New Zealand publishes a national seclusion plan by 2027, outlining the pathway to eliminate its use
• That the Ministry of Health includes actions for collection of outcomes and experience data from people engaging with mental health and addiction services in the first three-year implementation plan of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy. Actions should include specific data collection for high-needs populations by June 2027.
• It’s also renewed a previous recommendation - that Health New Zealand develops an action plan by June 2027 to meet the needs of Māori and whānau accessing specialist mental health and addiction services.

Committment to reducing use of seclusion

Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey said the report suggested the country was starting to turn a corner regarding faster access to support, more frontline workers, and a better crisis response.

“Workforce vacancy rates are improving, with rates falling across the Health New Zealand adult mental health and addiction workforce from a high of 11 percent in 2022 to eight percent in 2025,” he said.

“There are now more frontline workers, with the number of people entering mental health and addiction training increasing since 2021, with 514 people entering training in 2025, compared with fewer than 400 in 2023.”

But he acknowledged there was still more work to do for young people.

“Eliminating seclusion is an issue I have been closely looking at since coming into office and one I care strongly about addressing. In the meantime, I have been very clear that seclusion should be used only as a last resort.”

The Mental Health Bill currently before Parliament would further reduce its use, he said.

Te Whatu Ora’s national director for mental health and addictions, Phil Grady, said the bill would prohibit its use for people under 18 years of age.

“The use of seclusion has decreased significantly since 2009, however, we acknowledge there is still some way to go to consistently reach zero seclusion.”

In addition, New Zealand’s first Child and Youth Mental Health and Addiction Prevalence Study would take place later this year, and return results in late 2027, which would help to improve planning and target support.

A Ministry of Health spokesperson said it launched a consultation on the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy in April, which had a goal of providing a clear 10-year direction and vision to improve services.

The draft strategy included two strategic actions focused on improving data quality and completeness by ensuring the right information was collected to provide robust population data, in-line with the commission’s recommendation.

It would see data broken down by things like ethnicity, age, gender and district to track how the system was performing over time.

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