Referrals received by mental health and addiction teams in New Zealand from general practitioners

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).
Referral: A referral may take several forms, most notably:
(a) a request for management of a problem or provision of a service (eg, a request for an investigation, intervention or treatment)
(b) notification of a problem with the hope, expectation or imposition of its management.
The common factor in all referrals is a communication whose intent is the transfer of care/support, in part or in whole.
A person can have more than one referral open at once and therefore may be counted against each referral source.

https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/guide-primhd-activity-collection-and-use

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.
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 healthcare users aged over 65 (including psychogeriatric services) is incomplete.
Additionally, some organisations have breaks in reporting and/or incomplete data in PRIMHD.

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. -

At URL provided, select 'Referrals' tab, in the dropdown. Then choose Age group as the first one and gender as the second, then click on 'Download selected dataset'

This dataset includes information on mental health and addiction services (care) provided by secondary organisations funded by Te Whatu Ora (and prior to 1 July 2022, the Ministry of Health), it covers demographic and geographic information, client referral pathways, the types of services provided, the outcome of the services and legal status and diagnosis information.

The information was sourced from the Programme for the Integration of Mental Health Data (PRIMHD pronounced ‘primed’). The data was collected by district health boards (DHBs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).