Contracting opportunities: interpreting post-asylum geographies of mental health care in Auckland, New Zealand.
In New Zealand, the process of deinstitutionalization is continuing to unfold as a specific manifestation of welfare state restructuring rather than as a discrete process within the health care sector. In this paper we consider the geography of mental health care in Auckland, New Zealand's only metropolitan city. Here, a highly fluid and competitive housing market has profoundly (re)shaped the opportunities for community care. We report on findings from a survey of representatives of the key agencies providing mental health care in central Auckland. We argue that the re-placing of mental health care into the community has often involved the separation of residential and treatment issues, to the detriment of the communities, institutions and (especially) individuals involved. We trace this fragmentation back to the primacy of the ideology of restructuring over the philosophy of deinstitutionalization. We build our argument around a discussion of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992 and the apparent subordination of the Act to the emerging of a 'contract state' and broader legislation, such as the Resource Management Act 1991, the Privacy Act 1992 and the Commerce Act 1986, which underpins the re-regulation of New Zealand society.
Department of Geography, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand.
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Kearns
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Joseph
D003156:Community Mental Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003284:Contract Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003688:Deinstitutionalization / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005843:Geography; D006291:Health Policy; D006798:Housing; D006801:Humans; D017146:Models, Organizational; D009520:New Zealand; D019982:Organizational Case Studies