Latest cruel cut in social spending for suicide victims

Funds cut for suicide bereaved
A counselling service for people who have lost family members to suicide has suffered a government funding cut, despite relatives being at greater risk of self-harm. Clinical Advisory Services Aotearoa (Casa) provided counselling to family after a suicide as part of a Health Ministry initiative called Postvention. However, chairman Stephen Lisk said funding for the service was cut in June.

After the cruelty of denying 90% of ACC counselling claims for rape victims because the Government defined rape as 'an acute event' rather than as a mental illness, you would think the Government had ended its cruelty as social policy agenda - apparently not. The argument the Government are using here to deny counselling for the families of suicide victims is that 'suicide isn't an accident'.

The cruelty on display misses the fact that we have one of the highest suicide rates in the world and while millions are spent on road safety and massive draconian powers enabled to the Police all in the name of 'public safety' we don't have anywhere near that resource spent on a suicide rate that trumps our annual road deaths.