Everyone who needs mental health support in New Zealand, including women, deserves timely access to quality mental health and addiction support, the Women’s Rights Party said in its submission to the Ministry of Healths draft Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy. Submissions closed this week.
However, aside from references to pregnant women and parents with young children, there does not appear to be a focus on specific mental health issues of women in the draft strategy, Womens’ Rights Party co-leader Jill Ovens said.
This, despite the Ministry of Healths 2023/24 New Zealand Health Survey, which reported higher levels of psychological distress among women compared with men in the four weeks prior to the survey, i.e. 15.52% of women (aged 15+ years) compared with 10.2% of men.
The same survey showed 12.1% of women (aged 15+ years) experienced an unmet need for mental health and addiction services in the previous 12 months (up from 9% in 2022/23), compared with 8.9% of men (up from 5.3%). Statistical data for public hospital injury discharges show that rates of self-harm among women are double those for men and that these are rising.
The Women’s Rights Party said community support groups run by volunteers provide a valuable service for women, but these groups and roles need to be adequately funded.
Funding for organisations and groups that provide single-sex services for women such as women’s refuges and rape crisis centres, is often tied to inclusion of trans-identifying males, effectively excluding women who have suffered from male violence and sexual abuse, for example, Ms Ovens says.
There should be no coercion to include men in these groups by making funding dependent on removing women’s sex-based rights. The availability of single-sex services and spaces is critically important for health and wellbeing including women’s mental health.
Ms Ovens also says Women’s Rights Party members are concerned about the serious lapse in safeguarding for children and we urge the Government not to pull back on implementation of the revised Relationships and Sexuality Education curriculum.
Children in our schools are being indoctrinated into misguided beliefs about sex. Teaching children that there are more than two sexes and that they could have been born in the wrong body has already been a recipe for disaster for many children, Ms Ovens says.
It is time to remove activist groups, activist literature and activist displays from our schools and to implement the new RSE guidelines without any gender identity ideology. This includes in primary schools where the indoctrination starts.
Exposing children to this misinformation, and reinforcing a belief that sex can actually change, leads to unnecessary and largely irreversible damage with the use of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, the Women’s Rights Party says.
These hormones, and the surgeries that often follow, can alter hormone production permanently. In the context of mental health, we know that sex hormones are critical to mood regulation and children and young people exposed to these treatments may suffer lifelong mental health issues which going through puberty has been found to resolve for the majority of children.
The Women’s Rights Party is concerned about a tsunami of young people experiencing deep regret at therapy intended to transition them so they can pass as members of the opposite sex.
We are particularly concerned about the mental health of girls in this respect, as they appear to be highly susceptible to social contagion linked to social media, judging by the sudden increase in the number of girls being prescribed puberty blockers from 2011 in New Zealand and other countries coinciding with the growth of TikTok, Ms Ovens says.
The Women’s Rights Party agrees with the need to grow community-based services, and enhanced models of care, to foster positive mental health and wellbeing for pregnant women and parents with young children. and to support mental health and addiction needs within the family.
It is time that supporting mothering and parenting is viewed as an investment, rather than a cost. All efforts to support perinatal mental health and wellbeing are critically important not only for women, but also for infants and children. Pregnancy, childbirth and mothering are times of great significance in the lives of women, Ms Ovens says.
The Women’s Rights Party is calling on Government to remove gender identity ideology in all its forms from legislation, government policies, in our universities and schools, and in language used to describe women, particularly in women’s health.
At the same time, we support the collection of accurate data that identifies the ongoing social, economic, mental health and wellbeing issues for women and girls, Ms Ovens says. Collecting data that does not take into account sex has the effect of making women and girls needs invisible and therefore impossible to track, measure or adequately address now or in the future.