The Mike King backlash has quickly turned political. Will it change ...

The mental health advocate is standing alone with his claim that ‘alcohol is the solution for people with mental health issues’, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund for The Bulletin.

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‘Alcohol is the solution’

Yesterday we talked about some developments in the mental health space and our troublingly high and unmoving suicide statistics. Today, we’re going to look at another issue in the same area.

On Wednesday night, comedian and mental health advocate Mike King appeared on Newstalk ZB with Heather du Plessis-Allan to discuss a decision (unrelated to his work) to reject an alcohol license application for a charity fashion show intended to raise funds for suicide prevention and mental health awareness. Du Plessis-Allan was clearly perplexed by the decision, but it was the comments by King, the founder of Gumboot Friday and recipient of $24m in government funding, that made numerous headlines. “Alcohol is the solution for people with mental health issues,” King said. “I would suggest to you that alcohol has prevented more young people from taking their own lives than it actually makes them take their own lives.”

That interview flew somewhat under the radar until yesterday when King, questioned by the NZ Herald, not only defended his remarks but doubled down. The increased risk of suicide from alcohol consumption was a matter of opinion, he said. Mental health minister Matt Doocey denounced the comments, though defended his government’s decision to fund King’s charity to the tune of $24m.

Outrage turns political

The response to King’s defense has been rapid. In a scathing opinion piece for The Spinoff yesterday, Madeleine Chapman said it was the “latest in a long, long string of comments King has made that call into question his ability to be a leader in mental health and advocacy”, questioning how he ended up in the position of a seemingly untouchable public figure.

On the latest episode of The Spinoff’s politics podcast, Gone by Lunchtime, co-host Anabelle Lee-Mather recalled a speech she watched King give to a group of school students about five years ago. “He gave the most extraordinary, incredible kōrero to those kids. And one of the things that he really stressed was how destructive alcohol is when it comes to our mental health,” said Lee-Mather. “For someone who does have this extraordinary funding situation where he’s essentially got like an IV line of funding into his organisation, where you don’t have to jump through any loops, it’s just really surprising and a little bit concerning to hear that.”

As noted by Heather du Plessis-Allan in an opinion piece yesterday, the response to King’s comments has quickly turned political. Labour’s mental health spokesperson, Ingrid Leary, called for the government to pause and review its funding support for Gumboot Friday, reported Stuff. (The auditor general has already criticised the way King’s charity was funded). Leary said that King’s views were problematic, but also “a sad indictment of the government’s poor funding decision”.

Expect the prime minister to be questioned on this while he fronts to reporters later this morning.

Potentially dangerous ‘misinformation’

King’s comments are not just unfounded but potentially dangerous, and one Otago University expert went so far as to label it “misinformation”. King appeared to be suggesting that, as an alcoholic, he had used alcohol to mute other mental health issues – and while that may be the case, the evidence clearly shows it can exacerbate them. In a briefing published yesterday, health researchers said there was a “well-established body of research… that clearly links alcohol use with poor mental health outcomes and increased suicide risk” and that King’s views were the opposite of what the evidence showed.

A government inquiry into mental health and addiction noted a number of direct links between alcohol and harm, including evidence that it played a role in at least half of youth suicides and one-third of recorded offences. In 2017, the PM’s former chief science advisor Peter Gluckman cited “higher use of drugs and alcohol” as one contributing factor in our youth suicide rate.

In an interview with RNZ’s Checkpoint, Drug Foundation executive director Sarah Helm said King’s comments were “unhelpful” and risked damaging “the hard work of many people over successive decades to try and build awareness around mental health and suicide prevention”. Given the tidal wave of criticism, it will be interesting to see how the government chooses to defend its support of King, especially in light of stories such as this from rural mental health worker Anna Sophia on The Spinoff yesterday.

Mental health callouts to cease

King’s comments are particularly poorly timed given this month will also see police scale back their response to mental health-related call outs, as explained here by Stuff’s Bridie Witton. Outgoing police commissioner Andrew Coster said that while police will still attend “any jobs where there is an immediate risk to life or safety”, other calls will be directed to “more appropriate” services. In the year to May, mental health callouts made up 11% of all 111 calls but only 5% of these had a criminal element.

The theory behind why police are pulling back from mental health callouts is easy to understand: you would expect police to focus on their core role of preventing and responding to crime. However, there are concerns that it could instead pile additional pressure onto our already stretched mental health system and see people fall through the cracks.

Documents leaked to ThreeNews reporter Jenna Lynch reveal that Health NZ is yet to finalise how it will respond to the additional mental health callouts, with Labour saying “people’s lives will be at risk” if they were not done properly. In comments to NZ Doctor (paywalled), psychiatrist David Codyre said the police aren’t often the best equipped to handle mental health situations they find themselves in. That was the view echoed by the University of Waikato’s Sarah Gordon, who told the Science Media Centre that the involvement of police can actively harm people in need. “Relying on police as first responders for mental health related events can lead to inappropriate treatment,” she said.

However, there still needs to be something to fill the gap. In a Q&A published by Newsroom today, mental health specialist Paul Skirrow called the work done by police “invaluable” as there was “no real alternative being put in its place”. In comments to the Science Media Centre, AUT’s Antje Deckert also worried about the impact on already short-staffed health workers being forced to take on additional cases. “While reducing police callouts to people in a mental health crisis might work in favour of both police officers and the people in crisis, the subsequent intervention gap needs to be filled with an appropriate response. If the gap remains unfilled, we risk people not receiving the care they require and the worsening of our suicide statistics.”