Transcript
The number of Pacific people migrating to New Zealand has grown rapidly since the mid 1950s.
Many came to meet local labour force demands and others settled with hope for better opportunities for their families.
Now more than half of New Zealand's Pacific people are under the age of 25, the highest proportion of young among all the country's ethnicities.
But while migration has had many benefits, Pacific people have now become the most at risk of mental distress.
"What I found is that less than half of our Pacific people here in Aoteaora who are born here and raised here, actually did feel accepted by members of their own culture and by others. Which is a little bit damning and kind of suggests that on some level it's not exactly a super positive environment to grow up in."
Dr Karlo Mila has worked in the area of Pacific health, research and policy for 15 years and has studied suicide risk factors for Pacific people.
She surveyed 1000 New Zealand-born Pasifika and found those who didn't feel accepted by their own community were most at risk.
It's an experience that 'Amanaki-Lelei Prescott is all too familiar with.
"Like, I always felt like I was never good enough. And then always trying to figure out, am I ok?... Or trying to have the approval from my own self... I feel fine, but always trying to adapt myself to fit on my own spectrum. Because when I'm with my family I need to be more like this, when I'm at school I can slightly go... more fem... but at church it's just strictly like this."
'Amanaki says mental illness is a significant problem in New Zealand but many Pasifika don't understand mental health.
"No one would want to communicate or express their feelings. Especially if you're being mocked about it. Like, your feelings are your own feelings. You can't help if you feel that way. But people just don't get it and it's such a joke to them. Especially Pacific Islanders. It's because they don't believe in mental health. They believe in getting hidings."
The Tongan Methodist Association's Reverend Tevita Finau says Pacific elders struggle to grasp the concept of depression.
"When I grew up in Tonga there were no talks of depression. There were talk of people exhausted, fatigued... there was no word for depression that I could think of or could recall. Except people just saying that people have overworked or stress themselves out and not depressed."
Dr Mila says cultural differences remain.
"It's very new to have mental health symptoms like institutionalized or medicalised and we have like, a lack of comfort with all kinds of institutions here. I mean they're very palangi structures. Most of the parents grew up overseas in Tongan then coming here to NZ. And some of them are struggling to make changes and to be able to listen more to the kids and to be able to recognise signs of when young people are unhappy."
The mental health report - Te Kaveinga - found Pacific secondary students were more likely to report self-harm than other ethnic groups and three times more likely to report a suicide attempt in the previous 12 months.
A recent spike in the number of suicides in the Tongan church community was a wake up call for many.
"Some were not well prepared and congregations were struggling and also church leaders were struggling as well. And of course some did not understand and some took it wrongly. Some of them thought it's the will of God. But we had to work - God does not want anyone to take the life of anyone else or his or her own life, you know to bring harm to himself or herself."
The report on the government's overarching mental health inquiry was released last week and it backs up the Te Kaveinga report.
It revealed Pasifika find the current system "hostile, coercive, culturally incompetent, individualistic, cold and clinical".
Dr Mila and Reverend Tevita Finau are hoping for change.
"It's a hard time to grow up for Pacific young people and if we can accept that and accept them. Come as you are, who you...just try and create loving relationships. That's the best suicide prevention really."
"A lot of them are still learning and of course a lot will not unlearn what they've grown up with, their understanding... but they need to learn more about depression and also being stressful here. Being lonely. Because in Tonga, you are hardly lonely."
Dr Mila believes mental health will become the single biggest problem among Pasifika in the next ten years.
Pacific people are now backing calls for the mental health system to be overhauled and for more 'Pacific centred' ways to be adopted.
This is Indira Stewart.
