Ngā whakawhitinga: standing at the crossroads : Māori ways of understanding extra-ordinary experiences and schizophrenia.
type: CreativeWork
description: Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities are being diagnosed with schizophrenia at significantly higher rates than majority groups all around the world. Aetiological literature reveals a wide range of causal explanations including biogenetic, social and cultural factors. A major limitation of this body of research is the assumption of schizophrenia as a universal syndrome. When viewed through an indigenous lens, experiences labelled schizophrenic by Western psychiatry have been found to vary from culture to culture in terms of content, meaning and outcome. The current project aimed to investigate Māori ways of understanding experiences commonly labelled ‘schizophrenic’. The philosophical frameworks that guided the research were Kaupapa Māori Theory and Personal Construct Theory. A qualitative approach was used and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 57 participants including tangata whaiora (service users), tohunga (traditional healers), kaumatua/kuia (elders), Pākehā clinicians, Māori clinicians, cultural support workers and students. Four categories were derived from qualitative thematic analysis. These being: making sense of the experiences, pathways of healing, making sense of the statistics and what can we do about the statistics. Overall, Māori constructions related to other indigenous constructions of mental illness and wellbeing cited in the international literature but were in stark contrast to current psychiatric constructions. The current project indicated Māori participants held multiple explanatory models for extra-ordinary experiences with the predominant explanations being spiritual. Other explanations included psychosocial constructions (trauma and drug abuse), historical trauma (colonisation) and biomedical constructions (chemical brain imbalance). Based on these findings, recommendations for the development of culturally appropriate assessment and treatment processes are presented. Over the last couple of centuries a single paradigm, the…
abstract: Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities are being diagnosed with schizophrenia at significantly higher rates than majority groups all around the world. Aetiological literature reveals a wide range of causal explanations including biogenetic, social and cultural factors. A major limitation of this body of research is the assumption of schizophrenia as a universal syndrome. When viewed through an indigenous lens, experiences labelled schizophrenic by Western psychiatry have been found to vary from culture to culture in terms of content, meaning and outcome. The current project aimed to investigate Māori ways of understanding experiences commonly labelled ‘schizophrenic’. The philosophical frameworks that guided the research were Kaupapa Māori Theory and Personal Construct Theory. A qualitative approach was used and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 57 participants including tangata whaiora (service users), tohunga (traditional healers), kaumatua/kuia (elders), Pākehā clinicians, Māori clinicians, cultural support workers and students. Four categories were derived from qualitative thematic analysis. These being: making sense of the experiences, pathways of healing, making sense of the statistics and what can we do about the statistics. Overall, Māori constructions related to other indigenous constructions of mental illness and wellbeing cited in the international literature but were in stark contrast to current psychiatric constructions. The current project indicated Māori participants held multiple explanatory models for extra-ordinary experiences with the predominant explanations being spiritual. Other explanations included psychosocial constructions (trauma and drug abuse), historical trauma (colonisation) and biomedical constructions (chemical brain imbalance). Based on these findings, recommendations for the development of culturally appropriate assessment and treatment processes are presented. Over the last couple of centuries a single paradigm, the…
author: Taitimu, Melissa
language: en
keywords: Māori psychology, schizophrenia, Kaupapa Māori theory, Indigenous psychology
license: https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm
date published: 2008
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:07:07Z
provider: University of Auckland
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: ResearchSpace@Auckland

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/2292/3367