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\nMental Health Minister Matt Doocey said the government is on track to double number of clinical psychologists.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Mark Papalii\n<\/p>\n
The government is on track to double the number of clinical psychologists trained in the country, the Mental Health Minister says.<\/p>\n
Health New Zealand has released an updated plan<\/a> to grow the mental health and addiction workforce, which remains under significant strain with pressure across services.<\/p>\n Minister Matt Doocey said the frontline workforce had grown by about 10 percent over the past year and there had been good progress in areas such as clinical psychology.<\/p>\n “We had a target of growing the number of clinical psychology internship places from 40 to 60. The latest data I’ve seen we’ve now grown that to 76 so we’re on target to double the amount of clinical psychologists that we’re training,” he said.<\/p>\n Universities had also added 12 places to clinical psychology training programmes as part of work to tackle a 12.6 percent vacancy rate.<\/p>\n Doocey said growing the Health NZ-funded psychiatry workforce remained the biggest challenge, with an almost 20 percent vacancy rate.<\/p>\n “We have also made it a priority to grow the number of stage one psychiatrist registrar training positions available each year, it has gone from 33 in 2024 to 54 in 2026,” he said.<\/p>\n Doocey said the government had set a target of training 500 mental health and addiction professionals each year.<\/p>\n 349 people had begun training in semester one, he said.<\/p>\n “We’re on track to meet that 500 target by the end of the year. What we do know is there’s too many workforce vacancies that stop people getting the timely access to support they need,” he said.<\/p>\n “At the one-year mark, it’s appropriate that Health NZ is updating the plan. This gives us the opportunity to acknowledge early gains, introduce new actions, and target workforce pressures.”<\/p>\n The workforce plan included improving training opportunities for enrolled nurses, establishing workforce training to respond to methamphetamine-related harm, growing and developing the forensic workforce and reviewing growth in psychology hubs to build more psychology training capacity.<\/p>\n