Dr Hinemoa Elder: We need more mental health care in NZ

As she comes towards the end of her career as a working psychiatrist, Dr Hinemoa Elder says there’s never been more need for mental health resources to help navigate, “extremely trying times”.

“You know, I’m 60 years old and this feels like the worst confluence of horrible and terrifying global and more local experiences that I’ve seen in my life.”

Indigenous resources, particularly Māori resources, have a valuable place in the spectrum of ways to help people struggling with mental health, she says.

This month, she’s appearing at HamLit in the Hamilton Arts Festival, alongside award-winning poet, Dr Marama Salsano, where the pair will discuss the intersection between culture, creativity and mental health.

“Here is something that may be absolutely new to many of the people who attend. And that’s always provides some different kind of juicy experiences, doesn’t it?

“Because it gets in behind some of our defences.

“We might have some ideas about what might work for us and what might be less helpful. Whereas when we’re presented with something that comes from a different worldview perhaps, or from a Māori worldview, that we haven’t previously been aware of, then it opens up some really new potential, new experiences and a freedom, a freedom to consider our lives differently.”

Prior to her career in psychiatry, Elder was a children’s television presenter, a “fortunate time”, she says.

“Live television is a thing of the past now unless it’s a sports event or some other major national event. Afternoon telly for kids is a thing of the past. So, it was a great moment in time.

“I had a lot of fun, made some great friends, learnt a lot of good skills. And I suppose, yeah, you could see even then, I love coming from a young person’s perspective and trying to engage young people in light-hearted activities that also have some kind of educational element to them as well.”

She carried that interest in young people into her psychiatry career.

“I really like kids. I really like teenagers. I really enjoy the playfulness and the challenge. I like to work hard to understand the tamariki’s perspective and the whānau perspective around them and to think about the people who are not in the room, but who are exerting an influence over their tamariki and their whānau’s experience of what it means to be a tamariki, which is changing rapidly in our world.”