Hard to tackle issues for those in ?a dark space?
By Jamie Melbourne-Hayward
In tough times communities need to rally together and watch out for early warning signs of depression. Lifeline manages the national depression health-line through their 0800-numbers and is affiliated with the John Kirwan campaign to raise mental health awareness. General Manager of Lifeline Anil Thapliyal says although there are not significantly higher numbers of people calling for help, the issues raised certainly follow a trend. ?The types of issues coming in about financial matters have literally doubled ? there are defiantly more people presenting with issues around the stresses brought about by financial matters. ?In general our lifeline service is very overloaded, we can?t answer all the incoming calls,? says Mr Thapliyal. There has been a marked increase in the number of rural callers where ?issues might be harder to tackle? than in a city that has more support services. Lifeline has a ?pathway mapped out? in terms of intervening when they feel people are at breaking point. ?People who call up are often very distressed and in a dark space,? Mr Thapliyal says. Often the first step of alerting someone about troubled feelings is the hardest to take ? a good place to start is family, friends, and for students; school teachers. In extreme cases lifeline will call emergency services, which are often more than happy to deal with such incidents. ?Research shows that in difficult times people start to become more cohesive, that is a good part of all this. ?There are certainly impacts on communities, but more so on spouses and children, because being in this state [of depression] takes a toll on the basic facets of life,? he says. In local communities there is a ?level of compassion and resilience in tough times? and even the commercial banking sector has approached Mr Thapliyal for advice in offering help to their customers. ?In the past we have never seen commercial entities reach out like this. ?I take my hat off to them,? says Mr Thapliyal. Counselling phone lines are a step-removed from clinical intervention such as prescribing anti-depression drugs. Auckland University senior lecturer Dr Simon Hatcher is at the forefront of how the recession has affected clinical psychological medicine. Psychologists deal with peoples? wellbeing and counselling but only a psychiatrist can prescribe anti-depression medication. Mr Hatcher says lifeline has the ?best figures? on how the recession is affecting the front line because he is not seeing a rise in clinical prescriptions. ?The figures are not showing an increase, and there has been some information around about the harm of prescribing too many drugs,? says Mr Hatcher. Unemployment is the largest contributor to depression in the country, and the last time there was such a high increase in severe depression was during the 1930s depression where middle aged and older men were heavily affected. ?It?s going to have a big impact with unemployment expected to reach 81,000 next year,? he says. There are currently around 40,000 unemployed, and with that number expected to double Mr Hatcher says prevention is important at this point. ?It?s important to provide jobs, and improve welfare so for people that have lost jobs it is not such a dramatic fall from grace,? Mr Hatcher says. During tough economic times in the 1980s New Zealand did not fare as well as countries like Finland, where unemployment rates were similar, but Finland didn?t cut welfare spending. Another awareness campaign similar to the John Kirwan one is expected to be run near the end of the year. ?People need to be more aware of the early warning signs, like irritability and not sleeping properly,? says Dr Hatcher. Lifeline?s number is , and youth can visit www.thelowdown.co.nz
