Face-to-face contacts by mental health and addiction services in New Zealand
By team type and service provider, year ended June 2025, number of contacts
| Service provider | Team type | Number of contacts |
|---|---|---|
| District health board | Inpatient Team | 5,333 |
| District health board | Community Team | 891,376 |
| District health board | Alcohol and Drug Team | 123,147 |
| District health board | Forensic Team | 38,484 |
| District health board | Residential / Accommodation Team | 15 |
| District health board | Co-Existing Problems Team | 4,278 |
| District health board | Intellectual Disability Dual Diagnosis Team | 4,378 |
| District health board | Specialty Team | 41,491 |
| District health board | Maternal Mental Health Team | 21,469 |
| District health board | Eating Disorder Team | 16,775 |
| District health board | Needs Assessment and Service Coordination Team | 2,634 |
| District health board | Specialist Psychotherapy Team | 1,177 |
| District health board | Early Intervention Team | 24,048 |
| Non-governmental organisation | Community Team | 912,129 |
| Non-governmental organisation | Alcohol and Drug Team | 227,326 |
| Non-governmental organisation | Forensic Team | 1,411 |
| Non-governmental organisation | Residential / Accommodation Team | 5,269 |
| Non-governmental organisation | Co-Existing Problems Team | 6,903 |
| Non-governmental organisation | Intellectual Disability Dual Diagnosis Team | 3,189 |
| Non-governmental organisation | Specialty Team | 25,271 |
| Non-governmental organisation | Maternal Mental Health Team | 4,768 |
| Non-governmental organisation | Eating Disorder Team | 384 |
| Non-governmental organisation | Needs Assessment and Service Coordination Team | 1,637 |
| Non-governmental organisation | Early Intervention Team | 3,259 |
Definitions
Mental health: A state of wellbeing in which the individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community (World Health Organization 2012).
Addiction, drug or alcohol: Repeated use of a psychoactive substance or substances, to the extent that the user is periodically or chronically intoxicated, shows a compulsion to take the preferred substance (or substances), has great difficulty in voluntarily ceasing or modifying substance use, and exhibits determination to obtain psychoactive substances by almost any means. Also known as alcohol and drug dependence (World Health Organization 2012).
People seen: Users of mental health and addiction services. The person does not need to be physically present to be counted for example telephone contact with a clinician. People seen in more than one financial year are counted in each relevant year.
Data calculation/treatment
Ethnic group: In order to report a single ethnicity for each person, responses have been prioritised according to a list published by Stats NZ.
For more information
Limitations of the data
Some organisations had breaks in reporting and/or incomplete data in PRIMHD in the 2019/20 year. A few NGOs started and/or stopped reporting during 2019/20 so not all organisations have data for the whole time period. Additionally, reporting for some organisations was affected due to level 4 lockdown for COVID-19, affecting records particularly for the period of April and May 2020.
It is known that some of Hawke's Bay District Health Board's PRIMHD data is over-reported (duplicated) for the 2019/20 year, so figures may be high in these data tables. For this reason please use Hawke's Bay data with caution. Nelson Marlborough DHB moved to a new patient management system in early 2018. This led to some changes in data reporting patterns in 2019/20. For this reason please use Nelson Marlborough data with caution.
In 2008, DHBs began reporting to PRIMHD. In addition, from this date an increasing number of NGOs began reporting to the PRIMHD database. Shifts or patterns in the data after 2008 may reflect the gradual adaptation of non-governmental organisations into the PRIMHD collection in addition to, or instead of, any trend in mental health and addiction service use or outcomes. This point is illustrated by the artificial trend within the chart below in which the crude rate of clients seen by NGOs in 2017/18 was nine times that reported in 2008/09. Although NGO data is still incomplete, the Ministry of Health considers it complete enough for comparison across time from 1 July 2012 onwards.
Mental health and addiction services for older people are funded as mental health and addiction services in the Northern and Midland regions. In the Southern and Central regions they are funded as disability support services. PRIMHD mainly captures mental health and addiction services, and occasionally captures data on disability support services. This means data on health care users aged over 65 (including psychogeriatric services) is incomplete.
Exclusions
This dataset does not have information on:
- the provision of primary mental health care, such as care provided by general practitioners
- secondary mental health services funded by other government departments e.g. funded by the Ministry of Social Development
- problem gambling
- people with a mental illness who do not access services. -
Data provided by
Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand
Dataset name
Mental Health and Addiction: Clients 2024/25
Webpage:
https://tewhatuora.shinyapps.io/mental-health-and-addiction-web-tool/
How to find the data
At URL provided, select 'Clients' tab and click on 'Download data' button.
Import & extraction details
File as imported: Mental Health and Addiction: Clients 2024/25
From the dataset Mental Health and Addiction: Clients 2024/25, this data was extracted:
- Rows: 2-443,725
- Columns: 9-13
- Provided: 2,650 data points
This data forms the table Mental Health - People seen by mental health and addiction services by service provider and team type 2013–2025.
Dataset originally released on:
May 07, 2026
About this dataset
This dataset presents a summary of the specialist secondary inpatient and community mental health and addiction services provided in Aotearoa New Zealand. The information was provided by districts (the former district health boards, DHBs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) funded by Te Whatu Ora (and prior to 1 July 2022, the Ministry of Health).