This book examines a collaboration between traditional Māori healing and
clinical psychiatry. Comprised of transcribed interviews and detailed
meditations on practice, it demonstrates how bicultural partnership
frameworks can augment mental health treatment by balancing local
imperatives with sound and careful psychiatric care. In the first
chapter, Māori healer Wiremu NiaNia outlines the key concepts that
underpin his worldview and work. He then discusses the social,
historical, and cultural context of his relationship with Allister Bush,
a child and adolescent psychiatrist. The main body of the book comprises
chapters that each recount the story of one young person and their
family's experience of Māori healing from three or more points of view:
those of the psychiatrist, the Māori healer and the young person and
other family members who participated in and experienced the healing.
With a foreword by Sir Mason Durie, this book is essential reading for
psychologists, social workers, nurses, therapists, psychiatrists, and
students interested in bicultural studies.