Routledge Monographs in Mental Health. New York; London: Routledge, 2013. xxiv, 290 pp. (Tables, illus., B&W photos.) US$140.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-53428-4.
This book is a rich resource of cultural insights, attitudes and strategies for addressing mental health problems in communities of Polynesians (Pasifika) and Māori in the South Pacific, especially in New Zealand. Over the last 25 years, large migration streams have contributed to a significant ethnic diversification of the New Zealand population. At present, Pasifika constitute 7 percent of the population, while the indigenous Māori people form around 15 percent. It is important to add that both Māori and Pasifika sections of the New Zealand population are rather young, so many children and adolescents are growing up in a multicultural environment with ethnic and cultural aspects of their identity being salient in everyday activities. In this context, it is important that they develop a strong and positive cultural identity, which provides them with an extensive repertoire to negotiate difficult situations in which they are faced with socio-cultural diversity, unfair treatment or even negative stereotypes. After all, a positive cultural identity and high levels of self-esteem can help adolescents to buffer the effects of cultural differences, discrimination or racism on their psychological well-being.
For a variety of reasons, however, many Pasifika and Māori are not successful in negotiating and shifting their identities between ethnic and mainstream circumstances. Their socio-cultural and psychological development is not infrequently hampered by the discrepancy between cultural contexts that are crucial in their lives, which often entails school problems, anxiety, loneliness, anger, depression and violence. As a corollary, a disproportionate number of Pasifika and Māori are diagnosed with mental health problems. Until recently they were routinely treated with Western therapeutic strategies, but the results of this therapy were generally below par because of the cultural differences that are at stake. Over the past 30 years, integrative and holistic approaches may have been developed, but these, too, are chiefly framed within a cultural perspective that does not match with the socio-cultural background of Pasifika and Māori. If the members of South Pacific communities are to be engaged effectively, they need to be approached and appreciated through a cultural lens that acknowledges their different cultural background, which in turn facilitates intercultural communication in counseling. This book aims at providing the necessary resources for intercultural counseling and to expand the growing corpus of literature that specifically covers mental health issues among populations that are indigenous to the South Pacific region.
The book is divided into four parts. The first part focuses on identity issues and provides a discussion of the cultural contexts in which mental health problems of Pasifika and Māori are to be situated. It opens with a chapter by Melinda Webber on behaviours, perceptions and challenges of adolescents in a multi-ethnic urban context, which offers some pertinent insights into the cultural encounters and self-perceptions of young people who face complicated choices that affect their socio-cultural and psychological development in an ethnically diverse society. Her examination of adolescent understandings of cultural and ethnic aspects of their identity provides a wonderful introduction to the issues addressed in subsequent chapters, such as, for example, the contribution of parents and grandparents as facilitators of cultural knowledge who may help to clarify transgenerational changes and conflicts. Teena Brown Pulu, herself of mixed New Zealand and Tongan descent, presents some marvellous autoethnography to explore how identity is shaped by location, nationality and family migration patterns.
The second part focuses on therapeutic practices and includes a range of case studies presenting innovative strategies for dealing with mental health problems. Some practitioners describe their creation of visibly striking resources that resonate directly with the cultural background of their clients, while others compare culturally sanctioned ways of connecting counselors with clients holistically, including their family, their village and country or land. Furthermore, differences between Pacific Islanders born and raised on the islands and those born and raised in New Zealand are discussed in relation to different values of respect, solidarity and resilience, while the ambiguity of family relations are also explored in relation to sexual violence. Pleas are made for counselor education, in which greater emphasis is placed on cultural imagery and meanings, one of which concerns the different meaning of death in Pacific worldviews.
The third part is specifically concerned with a large-scale research program on the social meaning of death and dying, associated customary practices, bereavement and healing in the Māori world in New Zealand. It includes a case study of the public performance of grief following the passing of the Māori Queen in 2006, and the national significance of this event. An autoethnographic reflection on the ethical dilemmas of doing research on Māori who are dying or others who are mourning the loss of family or friends is also provided.
The final part offers various reflections on therapeutic practices. Several traditional stories, myths and poems are reinterpreted in order to identify timeless truths about cultural well-being, intercultural programs are demonstrated to be required at multicultural high schools, the unadulterated voice of the mentally ill is advocated to be taken seriously, while, finally, a Pacific psychotherapist and counselor cogently argues that spirituality is an important source of inspiration in all aspects of life for all Pacific peoples.
Each part begins with a selection of powerful poems by Serie Barford, Tracey Tawhiao and especially Selina Tusitala Marsh, a well-known literary critic and poet, who herself is of mixed Samoan, Tuvaluan and English descent. These poems express unequivocally that mental health problems of Pasifika and Māori cannot be considered independently of the cultural diversity and associated ambiguity that characterizes their lives in contemporary New Zealand and elsewhere in the South Pacific.
Toon van Meijl
Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
pp. 377-379