Mental health support needed for flood victims: advocate

Otago Daily Times

2 days ago

People in the Tasman region will need long-term mental health support after devastating winter floods, a mental health advocate says.
Locals have endured two flood emergencies and repeated orange heavy rain warnings in recent weeks.
The Nelson Tasman region is again under a heavy rain warning until at least 10pm today.
Nelson Tasman Emergency Management duty group controller Rob Smith told RNZ's Checkpoint programme today that residents are tired, and the current weather system would typically not be one to worry about if it were not for the previous flood damage.
The Rural Support Trust says many already flood-affected residents were also feeling very anxious as more heavy rain fell.
Mental Health Foundation chief executive Shaun Robinson says when disaster strikes, people were usually in a more practical mode, adrenaline pumping, and doing what they needed to do to respond.
It was the aftermath that could leave some people feeling depressed, hopeless or isolated - a natural human response to a very difficult situation, he said.
"It's then when you have to look at the aftermath and the fact that things are not going to go back to the way they were, that can be really difficult and that's when it can really start to affect people's mental health and well-being.
"People need to really create a new sense of what living in that place is going to be about."
Robinson described what was happening in Tasman as an "ongoing natural disaster" rather than separate floods.
Community connections made a big difference.
"What we've seen and what farmers and rural people have told us from the Cyclone Gabrielle experience [in 2023], was that it was communities continuing to work together that made the difference to them continuing to have hope and a sense of not being alone in this, and therefore boosting their resilience and mental well-being," he said.
The government also needed to look at what support it provided, not only offering counselling, Robinson said.
"Whatever communities do and whatever government does to respond to a situation like Tasman, really needs to be boosting those community networks, those community responses to this ongoing crisis.
"It is the months and even years after these major events that we need to encourage that sense of community resilience and actually put some work into creating and sustaining that community resilience.
"That is certainly what the government is responsible for resourcing as part of its response to natural disasters."
It was important that communities felt supported and did not feel like the country had forgotten them, he believed.
Robinson hoped people would feel comfortable to reach out and ask for support if they needed it.
Rural Support Trust Nelson Tasman chair Richard Kempthorne said people were getting tired after heavy rain has battered the region multiple times within the space of weeks.
"It certainly takes a toll on people. Many of these people who've lived in the area for years and they've lived on their properties for years and they've had flooding before. But very few people have had a flood to this extent."
Many people in the Motueka and Wai-iti valleys relied on their business in the area for income so flooding also threatened their livelihoods, he said.
"During the flood event, it will just be step back and let it happen. Once it drops, what's the damage left and then what can we do?
"What we encourage and what people I think are actually quite good at is to chopping it down into - what do I need to do first and what are the steps I need to take? Not trying to do it all at once and just bite one chunk off at a time."
Kempthorne said people should reach out for help as there was support available.
That included Taskforce Green which was going onto farms to clear debris, Big Bake in Wakefield which was preparing food for rural communities, Federated Farmers, and the Rural Support Trust which offered counselling support.