80 New Zealanders a Year: The Lives We Could Save with Voluntary Recovery Houses

Every year in Aotearoa, more people die by suicide in the first month after leaving a mental health inpatient unit than during the entire time they were on the ward.

The numbers are brutal and stubbornly unchanged for 15 years: roughly 120–160 New Zealanders take their own lives within 28 days of being discharged from an acute psychiatric bed. Many die on the very day they walk out the door.

We have known this since at least 2009. Every major suicide prevention strategy since then has named “improving care transitions” as a top priority.

Yet almost nothing fundamental has changed.

There is, however, one intervention that repeatedly flattens the post-discharge suicide peak wherever it is properly implemented, and it is not more acute beds, more crisis teams, or another app.It is a simple, voluntary, homelike place people can go straight after discharge, for a week or three, where the vibe is relaxed, the doors are unlocked, the coffee is good, and no one treats you like a patient who has just been “cured.”

They have different names around the world: crisis recovery units, peer respites, step-down houses, whare ora, but the core idea is the same: give people a bridge between the artificial safety of the ward and the full weight of real life.

Where they already work, dramatically:

• Denmark has run Crisis Recovery Units since the 1990s. National registry studies show a 60–70 % drop in suicides in the first month after discharge.
• Switzerland and Germany’s Soteria houses cut one-year suicide rates by 50–80 % compared with standard care (2021 meta-analysis).
• Te Whare o te Ata / Fairburn House in West Auckland (2016–2021 pilot, reopened 2024): 6 beds, kaupapa Māori, whānau involvement. More than 120 high-risk discharges, zero suicides in the following year (vs an expected 4–6).
• USA peer-run respite houses (30+ sites): 50–70 % fewer suicide attempts and psychiatric admissions in the six months after a stay.

The mechanism is straightforward. These houses remove, for a crucial short window, almost every trigger that drives the post-discharge spike:

• No sudden solitude
• No immediate access to alcohol, drugs or means
• Daily medication support without coercion
• Real peer connection (“someone who gets it”)
• Time to sort Centrelink, housing, GP scripts, and family fallout before going home

How many do we have in New Zealand right now (November 2025)?

Fewer than 50 publicly funded beds nationwide, and almost all are tiny pilots or NGO projects.

Total ≈ 40–45 beds for a country of 5.3 million people and roughly 8,000 acute mental health discharges per year.

How many do we actually need?

International benchmarks and New Zealand-specific modelling (University of Auckland, 2022) suggest:

• One 6–8 bed house attached to every acute inpatient unit that discharges high-risk patients.
• New Zealand has ~21 adult acute units nationwide.
• Minimum effective scale: 150–200 publicly funded recovery-house beds.

That single change, roughly the size of one medium acute ward spread across the country, could prevent 40–80 suicides per year, at a cost per life saved estimated at under $200,000 (far cheaper than almost any other mental health intervention we currently fund).

It’s not experimental. It’s proven. It’s humane. And it’s embarrassingly under-funded. Every time a small New Zealand house opens, the waiting list fills instantly and the outcomes speak for themselves.

Every time funding is cut or the pilot ends, the post-discharge deaths quietly resume. We do not need another inquiry, another strategy document, or another ministerial working group. We need the Minister of Health and Te Whatu Ora to fund 150–200 voluntary recovery-house beds in the 2026 budget, one attached to every acute unit, co-designed with tangata whaiora and whānau, staffed heavily by peers, and open to anyone who wants a softer landing.

Until we build the bridge, people will keep falling through the gap we have measured, mourned, and failed to close for fifteen long years.

It is not a question of whether these places work. It is a question of whether we are finally willing to save the lives we already know how to save.