EDITORIAL Whenever we talk about mental health, most conversations circle around the types of issues that can be solved with better sleep and some time in nature, or issues that people need to be hospitalised for. There is an “in between” we often forget – and that’s where a lot of us fall. These are the “missing middle” in mental health: people whose condition is neither mild nor severe but somewhere in between.
That gap doesn’t exist just in conversation. It is very real with regard to access to diagnosis and treatment of mental health issues in New Zealand. In a feature about OCD treatment in New Zealand published a few days ago, the Herald highlighted the issues with access to diagnosis and treatment for the condition across the country, and the disparities and inequities that still exist in that access.
One of the people who opened up about living with this mental health disorder was Laura Butler, from Hastings, who told the Herald about her difficulties accessing treatment in the past and how, because of the cost of accessing specialised treatment in New Zealand, she’d often had to let herself get “more and more unwell” in order to be able to access support through the public system..