Save men's help-line

Suicide rates are on the decline, but more men than women are still dying. This is not the time to get rid of New Zealand’s only phone counselling service set up to help men, says Jim Anderton MP for Wigram and former minister responsible for the government’s suicide prevention strategy.

Health Ministry figures show that 370 of the 483 people who killed themselves in 2007 were men.

“When I was the Associate Health Minister in the last Labour-Progressive government, we put considerable funding into public campaigns about depression and suicide prevention. We knew we had to target men deliberately because it was harder to reach them.

“Campaigns fronted by ex-rugby player John Kirwan have been very successful in de-stimatising mental illness and raising awareness of depression. The fact that a male role model was chosen to front this campaign was very deliberate.”

Lifeline runs the national helpline set up for men, but because of a funding crisis caused by the recession, the ‘Mensline’ will close tomorrow. All calls will be diverter to general Lifeline counsellors who are 75 per cent female.

Mensline has been funded by a number of private and public sponsors.

“I call on the Minister of Health to step in and work out how we can keep this line going. I suspect that the money required to restore the service is considerably less than it costs to fund other help lines like Quitline for smokers or the Gambling Helpline,” says Jim Anderton.

“The New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA) puts a price on a life lost when it decides which black spots to fix. The more lives lost at the black spot, the more likely the road will get fixed. The cost of one life lost is reckoned to be about $2.5 million.

“Surely the government can find what is likely to be a fraction of that, to keep this helpline going and potentially save many lives,” says Jim Anderton.

ENDS

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