Instead, the Government needed to invest in attracting, training and retaining more mental health professionals amid a 650-strong shortage, said Garrick — chair of NZNO’s mental health nurses section.
Minister for Mental Health Matt Doocey this month announced a new one-year post-graduate diploma at Canterbury University from 2026 for psychology graduates, which would allow them to become psychology associates.
‘This is a distraction from the shortage of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health nurses.’
“Every year there is a large amount of psychology students who graduate with an undergraduate degree but are unable to progress further due to the limited number of post-graduate clinical pathways,” Doocey said in a release.
They could then, with the appropriate support, work in areas with few psychologists such as rural and hard-to-reach communities, he claimed.
A clinical psychologist requires a masters degree — a minimum of two years’ study beyond a three-year undergraduate degree — plus 1500 hours of supervised practice. All up it would take at least six years.
Mental health nurses usually do a one-year nurse-entry-to-specialist-practice (NESP) supported-entry programme after a three-year nursing degree.
Garrick said the associate psychologist role appeared to be a mix of psychology, mental health nursing and social work which had emerged from the United Kingdom where it had also been controversial.
Instead, the Government should fund more post-graduate placements and supervision for clinical psychologists, as well as better support for an under-stress mental health nursing workforce.
“Why create another role? We already have established workforces for mental health nursing, clinical psychology and social work,” Garrick told Kaitiaki.
“This is a distraction from the shortage of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health nurses. These professions need to be recruited and retained.”
Over 200 psychologists have also signed a letter written by clinical psychologist Laura Barkwill to Doocey warning the new role could harm patients and “dumb down” the profession, RNZ reported. Barkwill and others have also launched a petition against the move they say is a dangerous “shortcut” to a psychologist title.
The mental health nurses section last year met Doocey to discuss how to better support mental health nurses, especially for acute services.
Workforce funding ‘reprioritised’
But instead of investing in the long-term workforce, Doocey had diverted $10 million set aside by Labour for that purpose, into its mental health “innovation fund“, Garrick said. The fund required organisations applying to have $250,000 co-funding — something Labour’s mental health spokesperson Ingrid Leary has said shuts out community mental health groups.
“It’s outrageous to suggest community mental health groups have hundreds of thousands of dollars sloshing around in their bank accounts,” she told RNZ recently.
Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) chair Hiran Thabrew has also suggested the money be invested in training more mental health professionals.
Garrick said there had been little engagement with the mental health sector by the Government, who last year gave $24 million to celebrity Mike King’s youth mental health charity I Am Hope without any competitive process.
“Where was the procurement process? Where are the outcome measurements for that particular service? What other services were considered for that money? As there are some very good youth mental health services out there – why were they not offered the chance to bid for $24 million dollars? That’s a hell of a lot of money,” Garrick said.
“So that’s really causing quite a stir out there in the mental health sector because it looks like no matter what you do and how you try to do it well, somebody else can just walk in and grab the money first.”
The NZ psychologists board has warned that introducing associate psychologists could increase the workload for already-stretched psychologists who must supervise them.