Since I last wrote, I’ve been working with OUTLine to make a collective submission to the Health Select Committee, asking that rainbow people are specifically named in the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill.
In the end, more than 500 people and 88 organisations supported the submission. We had national media coverage, and a number of other submissions backed our point (just a few of these: Human Rights Commission, Mental Health Foundation, Suicide Mortality Review Committee, Health Promotion Agency, Emerge Aotearoa, E tū, Hutt City Youth Council, Young Nationals, UniQ, Parents of Transgender and Gender Diverse Children in Aotearoa New Zealand, and Josiah Tualamali’i (who was a member of last year’s Mental Health and Addictions Inquiry panel). I haven’t read all of the submissions or watched the whole series of Committee hearings from yesterday, but it seems to me that the call to add rainbow people to section 13 of the Bill was one of the most consistent threads across the feedback that the Committee received.
Yesterday I spoke to the Select Committee (my presentation starts about 40:00 in). The Chair acknowledged the “phenomenal response” of our communities to this consultation, and stated a commitment to ensuring that rainbow mental health is addressed. She also spoke about the difficulty of balancing universal needs (the Commission needs to address mental health and wellbeing for the whole population) with selective approaches (focusing on the groups who face persistent inequities, and deciding which of these groups to specifically name). She has asked me to provide a supplementary submission considering how to recognise rainbow communities while ensuring a focus on the whole population.
So I’m working on that, but meanwhile I thought I’d share my speaking notes here:
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OUTLine is a national support service for LGBTI+, takatāpui, rainbow, New Zealanders. We provide peer support and counselling to help rainbow people find support, information and a sense of community.
But I’m here today to speak not just for OUTLine. Our submission is supported by 506 individuals and 88 organisations from across Aotearoa. Our amazing OUTLine volunteers, along with key community leaders and rainbow support organisations, academic researchers, community groups from across the motu, some key organisations from the mental health, sexual violence prevention and youth development sectors, church ministers, companies, unions, whānau, friends.
So many people supported me to be here today because mental health and addictions are key concerns for our communities. We know from a wealth of research evidence that the rainbow population experiences much higher rates of distress, addiction, suicidality and social isolation than our peers.
We also know that this is because of the discrimination and exclusion that we face – that there are specific factors that contribute to rainbow mental health. We face the same kinds of risk factors that others do – poverty, family violence, trauma. Some of us face other kinds of exclusion related to other aspects of our identities – racism, xenophobia, inaccessible services and systems. But we also, as a rainbow population, face specific risk factors. Like whānau rejection and homophobic bullying, like not having access to gender-affirming healthcare, and like growing up learning we don’t fit social norms and don’t fully belong. These are detailed further in our written submission.
And while we’d benefit from more support around mental health and addictions, support that understands our contexts and cultures, we also experience barriers to the health system, including explicit discrimination and implicit bias. These systems which used to define our identities as illnesses have not really ever been supported to let go of that framing completely.
So we have specific needs when it comes to mental health and wellbeing. It’s complicated, but it’s all pretty achievable – we need systems to listen, learn and provide services where we feel welcome and understood. Our communities have expertise in this, we’ve been providing support systems to each other for years. OUTLine has been operating since 1972, long before New Zealand ever got around to Homosexual Law Reform. We can do this, we want to help the government do this.
One of the biggest barriers to progress has been the lack of space for a strategic conversation. The mental health system isn’t working well in this space, it’s a bit tricky for them to figure out where to start, so we’ve been stuck in the too-hard basket for a long time.
And so it was really exciting to see that this Bill’s purpose includes an intention to address health equity for rainbow communities. Across all of the background documents to this Bill, we’re named as a key population. We were specifically heard in last year’s Mental Health Inquiry. The Ministry of Health has recently reiterated in a letter to some of us that they consider rainbow communities a priority in their mental health response.
Many of us have been advocating for years for this kind of national recognition in mental health policy. Being named would be groundbreaking. It would make such a huge difference to our communities’ work to support our peers, and would mean our DHB services would finally be accountable to providing rainbow-competent practice.
The problem is, of course, that we’re not actually named.
The Bill’s explanatory note states an intention to contribute to improving equity for Māori, Pacific peoples, disabled people, rainbow communities, and other groups that experience poorer mental health and wellbeing outcomes.
The text of the Bill itself requires the Commission to engage with Māori, Pacific peoples, disabled people … and other groups that experience poorer mental health and wellbeing outcomes.
Why might this be? This omission isn’t explained. Five MP speeches in the first reading acknowledged rainbow communities – it seems like you all thought we were in there. It’s not at all clear how the Commission could improve health equity for rainbow communities without specifically engaging with us. Why we’re different from those other groups named, and if a different approach was intended, what that would be.
If we’re named, the new Commission would be required to talk to us – to partner with us perhaps – and to think about rainbow health equity alongside the work it does with other populations.
If we’re not named, there is no reason to think we’d be a priority. We haven’t been a priority for our national mental health policy response in the last decade. With the recent major investment into the mental health system, even though the Ministry of Health has said they are thinking about rainbow people as a priority, we have not been targeted in any of the investment to date.
It’s past time for rainbow mental health to be recognised as a critical health equity issue that deserves national attention. Naming us in this Bill is an essential step towards recognition.
Rainbow suicide prevention 