MENTAL DISEASE PREVALENT AMONG THE MAORI Now it is dangerous and unjustifiable to assume that admissions to Mental Hospitals will give an adequate picture of Maori ill-health if we use the above classification. Dr Beaglehole has little or no contact with the patients in these institutions or he would realise that Maoris are very reluctant to enter them, so that the only Maoris seen there are those who are so floridly and severely psychotic that even their loving and tolerant families can no longer cope with them, i.e., the wildly manic, the acutely hallucinated, the acutely suicidal. Yet these form only a small percentage of his group 5. He himself says “psychosis is relatively insignificant in the whole picture of mental health.” The other four categories are hardly ever seen in Mental Hospitals except for the severe cases in Groups 1 and 2 referred from goal or borstal. A Maori voluntary boarder is a rarity, and these are the ones who will be suffering from any of his first four categories, not because these cases are rare in the Maori, but because they stay with their tolerant family and tribal groups rather than enter a Mental Hospital. Staying with their families, they manage to get along somehow, seen only perhaps by the tohunga who, it must be regretfully admitted, is liable to give them a vastly better type of supportive psychotherapy than a pakeha therapist can provide. So his figures are really meaningless. He would explain them by a subtle re-statement of the myth of the noble savage, happy and relaxed with his beer, cigarettes and making love in the sunshine, untroubled by the tensions which beset the superior pakeha. And of course, it is a myth which could be exploded by general practitioners working in such places as Rotorua and Auckland. The asthmatic “wheezy” chest is so prevalent among Maori children in Rotorua as to be considered almost “normal” according to one doctor who works there. Unfortunately there are no published figures, or at least not enough to draw firm conclusions from, but at least they point in the direction opposite to that in which the author would lead us to think. One would like to see some figures for the incidence of his first four categories of illness when the Maori competes on “equal terms” with the pakeha (i.e. unequal terms because based on pakeha values). At any rate, when he does not compete he falls back defeated into the psycho-neurotic retreat from life typified by the pakeha stereotype of the Maori—“lazy, carefree, happy-go-lucky, unambitious, thoughtless of the future.” Surely this is a mental health problem, and surely the Maori mental health problem is much graver than the professor would have us believe. Our prisons are full of his first four categories, if only they were diagnosed. As things are, they just don't get diagnosed.Now it is dangerous and unjustifiable to assume that admissions to Mental Hospitals will give an adequate picture of Maori ill-health if we use the above classification. Dr Beaglehole has little or no contact with the patients in these institutions or he would realise that Maoris are very reluctant to enter them, so that the only Maoris seen there are those who are so floridly and severely psychotic that even their loving and tolerant families can no longer cope with them, i.e., the wildly manic, the acutely hallucinated, the acutely suicidal. Yet these form only a small percentage of his group 5. He himself says “psychosis is relatively insignificant in the whole picture of mental health.” The other four categories are hardly ever seen in Mental Hospitals except for the severe cases in Groups 1 and 2 referred from goal or borstal. A Maori voluntary boarder is a rarity, and these are the ones who will be suffering from any of his first four categories, not because these cases are rare in the Maori, but because they stay with their tolerant family and tribal groups rather than enter a Mental Hospital. Staying with their families, they manage to get along somehow, seen only perhaps by the tohunga who, it must be regretfully admitted, is liable to give them a vastly better type of supportive psychotherapy than a pakeha therapist can provide. So his figures are really meaningless. He would explain them by a subtle re-statement of the myth of the noble savage, happy and relaxed with his beer, cigarettes and making love in the sunshine, untroubled by the tensions which beset the superior pakeha. And of course, it is a myth which could be exploded by general practitioners working in such places as Rotorua and Auckland. The asthmatic “wheezy” chest is so prevalent among Maori children in Rotorua as to be considered almost “normal” according to one doctor who works there. Unfortunately there are no published figures, or at least not enough to draw firm conclusions from, but at least they point in the direction opposite to that in which the author would lead us to think. One would like to see some figures for the incidence of his first four categories of illness when the Maori competes on “equal terms” with the pakeha (i.e. unequal terms because based on pakeha values). At any rate, when he does not compete he falls back defeated into the psycho-neurotic retreat from life typified by the pakeha stereotype of the Maori—“lazy, carefree, happy-go-lucky, unambitious, thoughtless of the future.” Surely this is a mental health problem, and surely the Maori mental health problem is much graver than the professor would have us believe. Our prisons are full of his first four categories, if only they were diagnosed. As things are, they just don't get diagnosed. The whole problem needs to be re-assessed and by Maoris, preferably Maori psychiatrists and Nurses W. and K. Beattie are among the growing number of Maori women to take up psychiatric nursing. The two sisters who come from Wairoa are working at Porirua Hospital. (National Publicity Studios photograph) psychologists. It is difficult enough for a pakeha to diagnose other pakehas, let alone to plunge into the unfamiliar territory of Maori values, myths and symbols which are of much greater importance to Maori psychic life than the corresponding religious symbols are to pakehas. Anyhow, the pakeha is just not trusted, “he wouldn't under-stand,” and this is unfortunately true. There are perhaps some gulfs which just cannot be bridged by kindness and the desire to help. Even if the Maori patient does talk, the most a pakeha can do is give mild supportive therapy even if he has “made a study of the Maori.” Worse still, most pakeha psychiatrists and psychologists follow the principles laid down by Sigmund Freud (which are not, and, with our present scientific method, cannot be “proved scientifically” as Dr Beaglehole states). Now these are brilliant and fecund “hunches” by a genius, a genius who was a middle-class, nineteenth century German, materialistic and mechanistic, but they are a handicap in under-standing the spiritual and religious experiences which are of such vital moment to Maori psychic life. No treatment can be successful unless the therapist is prepared to accept the reality of these experiences and this is just the sort of thing that many Europeans cannot and will not swallow. A true follower of Freud must despise these aspects