One official worried about the amount of negative statistics in the report.
A routine report on the Government’s mental health services was delayed for over a year as officials battled behind the scenes over plans to dramatically reduce the amount of data in it. The annual report, released more than two years late on Tuesday, still showed a very distressing picture of New Zealand’s mental health system - with a spike in the use of seclusion, a practice some liken to torture. But many indicators usually included in the report had been removed after a months-long and contentious editing process revealed in an Official Information Act request, including wait-times, suicide stats and the overall proportion of the population using specialised mental health services.