Absence of mental health adverse events questioned

A mental health campaigner is questioning why mental health care was not included when DHBs revealed their mistakes and mishaps.

Adverse event reporting has become a fixture in the health sector calendar.

Last week the Health Quality and Safety Commission co-ordinated the simultaneous release of the 20 DHBs' reports, and the commission highlighted the main concerns in the sector.

Life Matters Suicide Prevention Trust chairwoman Corinda Taylor, of Dunedin, said mental health deserved equal status and attention.

Leaving it out added to the stigma around mental health.

Mental health adverse events are included in the Office of the Director of Mental Health Annual Report.

But, unlike in the general reports, there is no detail about the cases, and no individual recommendations are included.

In the general report, recommendations are important, as they are designed to ensure the mishap does not happen to another patient.

''We are all taxpayers, and we deserve to see what is actually going on, whether it is general or mental health.

''The whole system should be transparent so that people can say: 'Yes, something bad happened to me, whether it's my eye that didn't get treatment or my mental health that didn't get treatment'.

''If people are allowed to see that the wrong leg got amputated, why can't they see that the patient didn't get the care they deserved from mental health and there was a suicide . . . or something else?'' Mrs Taylor said.

A Health Quality and Safety Commission spokesman said including mental health in the main reports had been deemed ''inappropriate'', so it was removed four years ago.

''This was predominantly due to the complex nature of these adverse events and the contextual issues associated with them.

''The [mental health] sector also advised the commission there was a preference for using the London Protocol, or a comparable structured process of systematic analysis, because the framework for analysis to review cases was more suitable for services than the root cause analysis process.''

The last annual mental health report shows Southern District Health Board had 23 adverse events in mental health in 2014.

Nationally, there were 185 reported mental health events, including 139 suspected suicides, in 2014.