Mental health experts say a nasal spray to help relieve depression should be subsidised to make it affordable.

It's the first new class of treatment for major depression in more than three decades.

Alexis Hutcheon, 31, says the spray, called Spravato, has made a huge difference to how she tackles her dark days.

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"It's like a weight lifted off," she said.

"I feel more well than I ever have."

She had tried different anti-depressants, but experts say this one works differently from traditional treatments.

"It acts on a different neurotransmitter in the brain," Associate Professor Elizabeth Scott Principal Researcher, Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney, said.

"We think what happens is it increases the connectivity between the synapses the connections between your brain cells, it actually makes them fire better."

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Professor Ian Hickie from the Centre, said the drug has a dramatic effect for at least half of the people who use it.

"So, to get 50 per cent of those people back to school, back to work, engaged with life is a major achievement, it's a step forward," he said.

It took three years for the add-on therapy, also known as esketamine, to be approved in Australia.

However, it costs several thousand dollars for a course.

Now, for the second time, a submission for subsidy is before a government advisory committee.

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Hickie said he believed people with mental health problems are unfairly treated when it comes to funding.

"It's my view that people with mental health problems, major depression, schizophrenia, have not been treated fairly not been treated equitably compared to people with breast cancer, compared to people with arthritis," he said.

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The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee is currently collecting submissions online from patients, carers and experts, as part of a review of all the evidence for reimbursed access.

Comments close next week, with a decision expected at a meeting in July.

By Jonty Dine of RNZ Parents of Orewa College students are concerned for their safety after two brutal assaults surfaced online.Two students were suspended and have now been excluded from the school.Two other students have…

Accusations of sex slavery, violence and a hitman have been laid out on another day of the murder trial of Chris Dawson who is accused of killing his wife Lynette Dawson, who disappeared in 1982.

The family's former babysitter, only identified as JC, has continued to tell the court about her relationship with Dawson, who she later married.

The two met in 1980 when Dawson was her Year 11 sports teacher at Cromer High School in Sydney.

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In 1981 Dawson and the then 17-year-old JC ran away together to start a new life.

Dawson allegedly left JC a note afterwards that read: "To my darling… All my love on our first real Christmas together. Knowing I will love you more each day".

But, JC told the court, the plan to run away together hit a roadblock when she attempted to break up with Dawson and the pair returned to Sydney just before New Year's that year.

Lynette vanished days later on January 9 1982 after failing to meet her husband, children and mother at the Northbridge Baths.

JC said she remembered receiving a phone call from Dawson around that time.

"He said 'Lyn's gone, she's not coming back. Come back to Sydney and be with me'," JC told the court.

JC says she then moved into the family home at Bayview and began wearing Lynette's clothes.

She claims that at the age of 18 she felt like she had become the "substitute house keeper", "sex slave" and "stepmother", and was allegedly rebuffed whenever she asked about Lynette.

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JC and Dawson were married in 1984 and had a child together.

She became emotional when she told the court she experienced violence daily in her marriage, which she claims was the reason why she left Dawson in 1990.

That same year JC says she met Lynette's brother and his wife and informed them Dawson once allegedly told her he wanted to hire a hitman to get rid of Lynette, but backed out because innocent people could get hurt.

Dawson denies that that conversation ever took place and also denies he killed Lynette.

He has accused his second wife of making up evidence as part of a mission to destroy him.

But JC told the court, "I am not going to destroy him, he will destroy himself for what he's done to people… to me… to Lyn".

A Wellington man has been sentenced for “knowingly” taking a “huge amount” of undersized pāua from the harbour to sell on the black market, the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) says.Felesese Sam Pati (45) has been banned…

A man was beaten with a hockey stick and had mince and cheese pies thrown at him by three disgruntled males who broke into his caravan while he was asleep. The young Taranaki trio was unhappy that one of them had spent the day…

Australia is going to the polls to decide who gets handed the keys to The Lodge – but that is not the only vote that matters to us here at Nine.

We will be posting a series of questions across election week and the day itself.

Our panel of experts will be discussing the results during the Australia Decides election special, which starts at 4pm on Saturday on Channel 9 and 9Now.

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An aggrieved man convicted after threatening to burn an RSA, blackmailing an artist and detailing an explosive attack on a Parliament building to police has had his appeal dismissed again.In 2012 Quinton Murray Berrett was inspired…

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Former US President George W Bush was left red-faced after accidentally condemning a Russian invasion of "Iraq" – the country his own White House decided to attack in 2003.

Bush was one of a series of speakers at his own Presidential Centre, alongside former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others.

The 43rd US president, who served from 2001 to 2008, launched a sustained rhetorical assault on Vladimir Putin's regime.

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"Russian elections are rigged. Political opponents are imprisoned or otherwise eliminated from the electoral process," Bush said.

"The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.

"I mean, Ukraine."

Quieter, Bush muttered "Iraq, too", before glancing back up at the audience and saying "75" – an apparent reference to his age.

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His accidental reference to the deadly conflict, which sparked a fall in US prestige around the world and saw hundreds of thousands of people killed, drew laughter from the audience.

Bush also praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, comparing him to Winston Churchill, and saying he led his country heroically against Russian aggression.

The Bush administration invaded Iraq in March 2003, claiming the US had intelligence that then-dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

No such weapons were found, but Hussein's regime was toppled and a democratic government installed.

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Bush declared victory in May 2003, but US troops remained in Iraq until 2011.

Estimates of casualties vary but typically are thought to be several hundred thousand, with many more replaced.

About 5000 US troops were ultimately killed during military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq launched by the Bush administration.

It is also thought that the invasion of Iraq contributed to the rise of ISIS, with many ex-Hussein officers and soldiers serving in the terror group's command structure.