7 Must dos from the 2024 DMH Summit
Executive Director at eMental Health International Collaborative (eMHIC) Anil Thapliyal explores New Zealand's two-decade journey in leveraging digital technologies to enhance mental health care, featuring notable successes like Whakarongorau and The Lowdown. Despite these milestones, Anil acknowledges the challenges of system-wide implementation and the need for a paradigm shift that fully integrates digital innovation into mental health services. The recent Digital Mental Health (DMH) Summit 2024 emerged as a pivotal moment, emphasising the importance of bold leadership, risk-taking, and collaboration to transform care delivery. Anil underscores the necessity of designing solutions that centre on the needs of service users, carers, and families, and lays out his 7 actionable steps to harness momentum and drive systemic change.
Anil has this to say
From The Lowdown to Whakarongorau
How long does it take to spawn and fully implement innovation? NZ has been exploring the role of digital technologies to improve timely access to MH information, care, support, and treatment since 2005. Despite many brilliant moments of successes ranging from The Lowdown, the National Depression Initiative, Just a Thought, Groov, Sparx, Headstrong, and the pivotal establishment of Whakarongorau (The National Telehealth Service of NZ) in 2015 by the Ministry of Health, we still have a long way to go to get it right by design across the entire MH care continuum—whether it be wellbeing initiatives, mild to moderate, acute mental health, or suicide prevention needs. In 2019, the New Zealand Ministry of Health launched the Digital Mental and Addiction Toolkit (DMHAT) guidelines, implementation of which was constrained by available funding at that time.
DMH Summit 2024:
A Turning Point for LeadershipCollaboration
However, the time seems to be right in New Zealand to optimise the taxpayer's existing investment in the establishment of these best practice digital mental health exemplars and impressive infrastructure.
I must extend my compliments to the NZ Minister for Mental Health, Hon. Matt Doocey, for his bold leadership in hosting the DMH Summit at the Grand Hall in NZ Parliament on Tues 10 Dec 2024.
It was such an honour for me to be one of the invited speakers to provide an international overview alongside the DMH sector legends Chris Boyd-Skinner, Terry Fleming, and Kevin Harper. The bold challenge put to all the delegates by Professor Miranda Wolpert on embracing innovation and taking risks if we are serious about bridging the gap between forever-increasing demand and available traditional MH support services strongly resonated with everyone and was, without a doubt, a highlight from the day for me.
Embracing Risk and Reimagining Mental Health Paradigms
We have an opportunity for a paradigm shift by embracing digital in mental health. Instead, in some cases, we have simply layered them onto existing mental health services. The opportunity still exists to re-imagine and build a new paradigm for the future of mental health care.
Designing for Users: A Blueprint for Future Success
My firm conviction has always been that we must focus on the service user, their families, and carers. If the digital mental health solutions do not work for them, then they do not work at all.
So much effort has gone into getting this digital mental health summit in parliament right, which is the culmination of two decades of very hard work by some of the brightest minds in NZ.
My 7 steps to success for keeping this momentum going
· Getting DMH right in NZ by design
· Building Digital MH champions for change,
· Enabling workforce development
· Fostering collective ownership of Digital MH
· Improving access
· Redesigning mental health systems navigation
· Focusing on partnership and collaboration, and anchoring DMH in policy.
