Contracting opportunities: interpreting post-asylum geographies of mental health care in Auckland, New Zealand

In New Zealand, the process of deinstitutionalisation is continuing to unfo ld as a specific manifestation of welfare state restructuring lather than a s a discrete process within the health care sector. In this paper we consid er the geography of mental health care in Aucklaad, New Zealand's only metr opolitan city. Hire, a highly fluid and competitive housing market has prof oundly (re)shaped the opportunities For community care. We report on findin gs from a survey of representatives of the key agencies providing mental he alth care in central Auckland. We argue that the re-placing of mental healt h care into the community has often involved the separation of residential and treatment issues, to the detriment of the communities, institutions and (especially) individuals involved. We trace this fragmentation back to the primacy of the ideology of restructuring over the philosophy of deinstitut ionalisation. We build our argument around a discussion of the Menial Healt h (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992 and the apparent subordina tion of the Act to the emerging of a 'contract state' and broader legislati on, such as the Resource Management Act 1991, the Privacy Act 1992 and the Commerce Act 1986, which underpins the reregulation of New Zealand society. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.