KEY POINTS:
Refugees coming into New Zealand are to get better help battling mental illnesses caused by war, ethnic cleansing, rape, torture and the murder of family and friends.
From next month, more than 100 mental health practitioners throughout the country will receive training in cultural competency to improve their
work with migrants and refugees.
New Zealand accepts 750 refugees each year. Many of those have come from war-torn areas, or have been victims or witnesses of horrific crimes.
The post-traumatic stress resulting from those experiences often affects their ability to start new lives in New Zealand, but providing effective mental health care for them has been difficult, said Sue Lim, the Asian health support services manager of the Waitemata District Health Board.
While the refugees had been given mental health care by high-quality professionals, the inability of most New Zealand mental health workers to appreciate the migrants' experiences often created a barrier between them, Mrs Lim said.
"We're talking about war zones - women who have been raped, young boys who the moment they are born they have the ability to hold a gun, they're fighting battles.
"And we're having these people not continue their treatment as a result of New Zealand practitioners not understanding where they're coming from."
That barrier led many to drop out of care programmes after just the first or second consultation, leaving them to "act out" their post-traumatic stress disorders, Mrs Lim said.
"They become at risk of harm to themselves, or to others, and that becomes a crisis."
The February hijacking of a public passenger aircraft en route from Blenheim to Christchurch was a good example of a refugee - in this case from Somalia - acting out the experiences of their past, she said.
In 2003, another Somali refugee was convicted of the frenzied murder and mutilation of a mosque cleaner. The attack was ruled to have been a result of insanity, yet the Somali man's GPs had not detected any mental illness.
The man had fled from the brutal tribal warfare of his home city, Mogadishu, in Somalia. After arriving in New Zealand in 1999, he received psychiatric care after a suicide attempt.
He was discharged, and although ongoing mental health care was recommended it was never received.
"Practitioners are saying they want this. Everyone has their own biases, and this is about making sure we don't impart our own biases on others."
The $100,000 Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Workforce Development pilot project is funded from the Wings Innovation Fund. The project has been developed by Waitemata's Asian Health Support Service and Auckland's Refugees as Survivors centre.
