A person who makes mental health maps: Student counselling on the other side of the world
BACP University and College Counselling September 2026

In New Zealand (NZ), a pepeha is a widely used traditional oral introduction where Māori people recite their heritage – it is structured and usually includes landmarks of the person’s birthplace as well as whakapapa, or genealogical connections. The non-Māori version of a pepeha is a ‘mihi’, which means ‘greeting’, among other things. Using this greeting when meeting new clients for the first time was just one of the many cultural differences which Kyra had to navigate upon moving to NZ.

U&CC: How do you navigate these traditions in your practice?

KC: Although my dad is from Aotearoa, I do not feel comfortable claiming any landmarks as ‘mine’ – I have no Māori heritage so no right to do that. It’s a debated topic about what is appropriate but that’s where I draw the line. So instead of using a pepeha structure, I worked with my te reo teacher and one of my colleagues to use a different introduction structure that talks about where I’m from. It means I can still make connections with others in the room, but it doesn’t lay any claim to something that isn’t mine. People here are always curious about where you’re from, and I am so glad my uncle did our family tree because I do get asked where my ancestors are from originally and when they arrived in NZ.

If I was at a smaller, less formal gathering, or a place where I am not centred in the discussions/not that important at the meeting, I would go for a much shorter version. The shorter mihi is one I use a lot and I think it gets the main points across; it explains where I live and work but includes mentioning my ancestors and ties to NZ.

U&CC: What information do you share with new clients?

KC: When I meet clients for the first time, I usually tell them that I am from the UK and came here in 2021 because I have a lot of family around – cousins, aunts, uncles – mainly in Wellington and Porirua (a town very close to Wellington), but also in Napier and one cousin living in Whangarei. Sometimes, I will mention my training, but I usually wait until they have explained what they are seeking support for so I can emphasise the most relevant bits of my approaches. If I sense that they need or would feel more comfortable with some more information, I might mention that I live in Wellington with my husband, dad and dog.

In my experience so far, some Māori clients like to start sessions with a karakia (a blessing, sometimes translated as ‘prayer’ but not usually religious) or by reciting their pepeha. When a client starts with their pepeha, I will always share mine too. In the first session, I usually do a bit of small talk before we get started, and then they need to sign a consent form. Then I would ask if there’s any particular way they would like to start off the session, and that’s usually when someone would request or recite karakia if they’d like to. I also know a couple of karakia by heart in case the person would like one recited but doesn’t know any or isn’t confident doing so.

U&CC: Did you always know you wanted to work with students once you moved to NZ?

KC: I was looking for a university job because I really enjoyed my time at Sussex and the client age group. When I started, I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to relate to the students, but I loved it. They’re so dynamic and very keen to make changes. It’s super fun.

U&CC: What does the frequency and pacing of sessions look like in your service?

KC: We can offer a certain number of sessions but depending on the client needs, there is flexibility. We normally operate without a waiting list. Students can go away and try the things we’ve talked about, and then come back in another month. I’ve got a couple of clients who just need to check in every month and it really makes a difference to them; it’s our job to help them to be able to finish their studies.

If we are doing a distinct piece of work, such as a phobia or OCD, and I know that we can do a really good piece of work in ten sessions, I will offer that, in consultation with the senior counsellor or team lead. If it’s more general or they’re not sure, we might see how it goes or spread the sessions out more, over six months rather than six weeks. Students are often reacting to something that’s happened so they might just need one session to come and talk about it.

Working less regularly is different from how I was trained. Students need lots of time to try the things we discuss, and because it’s free and they haven’t had to wait long for it, they’re not necessarily dedicating every moment to the homework we give them. In the NHS, people had been waiting for months and months for CBT and so when they finally got to it, it was their main focus. Whereas with my students, this is one of many things taking their attention. So, two weeks to practice is good.

U&CC: What’s the process for presentations that the service is not set up for?

KC: If people have more long-term complex issues, we refer them out. That’s a bit of a postcode lottery and also depends on how old they are, what the problem is, or whether we can find a service that’s free, because mostly full-time students can’t afford to pay.

There’s a service called the Accident Compensation Scheme (ACC) that provides support for anyone who has experienced sexual assault in NZ, so we refer out most of those cases. I actually work less with sexual assault than I would have in Sussex.

We’re not set up as a service to provide support for students presenting with traits associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD), long-term emotional regulation difficulties, difficulties sustaining relationships, or very complex trauma. We would try and help them find support elsewhere. We also see many students seeking an ADHD assessment, which we can’t provide.

U&CC: Your service is run alongside Te Tiriti principles – can you tell us what this means in terms of the university’s strategy?

KC: In 1840, representatives of the British Crown and many Māori rangatira (chiefs) signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi. There is ongoing discussion because there are two different versions of the treaty: one written in English and one in te reo Māori. The texts differ in important ways, leading to continuing debate about sovereignty, governance and Crown obligations. These differing interpretations have contributed to longstanding issues that remain unresolved today, and continue to influence contemporary law and policy. When an organisation describes its work as Te Tiriti-focused, it is often signalling a commitment to interpreting its obligations through Te Tiriti principles and Māori perspectives.

There’s a strategic plan for the university based on these principles. We take our values from the treaty, such as equity and access. So we look at whether we are seeing a proportion of Māori students reflected in the population, and audit our service to make sure it is welcoming and friendly, and that people feel it’s a place for them, not just a westernised medical centre.

U&CC: Do you see many Māori students seeking counselling?

KC: We see around eight per cent Māori students, and probably another two to three per cent of students from Pacific communities, whose cultural traditions may differ from those of many Pākehā/New Zealand European or British backgrounds. For many Māori people, talking to a stranger about their problems is culturally unfamiliar. Universities are getting better at attracting Māori students, making it more accessible, but they don’t have a good completion rate so there’s something missing there, support-wise, and I think that the counselling is definitely part of it. We could be doing better.

Massey is trying to do more. Things like having Māori signs, naming rooms – we’d ask a Māori person to help us and gift the names. In my previous workplace, rooms were named after different native plants. Even just having a dual language sign for the health centre would be really good.

U&CC: What are some of the main differences in culture that you’ve noticed between the two countries?

KC: The whole culture here is much more flexible in general; less formal, less rigid. It has made me change my practice. I had to get used to self-disclosure. There’s a strong emphasis on asking people where they are from, which I’ve had to get used to because in England that can be interpreted as a bit aggressive. Here it’s basically rude not to ask, especially Māori people because where they’re from, the land and their ancestors is so important to them; it’s more than just their identity.

Small talk at the beginning of a session and asking after people’s families is really important. People will often ask about yours and you have to respond; the whole psychodynamic way of holding yourself is generally not welcome and unlikely to get you anywhere with many Māori clients. Those values also influence the wider culture so it’s not just Māori clients. It’s really lovely, but very different from how I was trained.

U&CC: You’re a CBT therapist – how does that structure fit in with this type of culture?

KC: Traditional CBT requires you to set the agenda in the first five minutes. That works well for many people, but you can’t always do that with everyone here because it would be seen as so formal and rude; rushing people and not listening to them, imposing a structure on them that they haven’t asked for instead of building it based on a relationship.

Sometimes, sessions aren’t going to fit into fifty minutes and to rush through that is usually disrespectful. A two-hour meeting might begin with half an hour of introductions, where everyone will say who they are, where they’re from, and which tribe they’re from if they’re Māori. It’s a whole formalised way of introducing yourself. It takes a long time, and I was quite shocked when we had our first team meeting. I try to do fifty-minute sessions, but it doesn’t always fit, especially for our Māori clients. It does also mean that we don’t always get deep into the counselling work before introductions. If I have a Māori client, I’ll acknowledge that I’m not Māori, and we can work on something differently and try to address that elephant in the room directly so they might be more comfortable.

U&CC: How did you ensure you were prepared for the differences in culture?

KC: To register with the New Zealand Association of Counsellors (NZAC) here – a professional body broadly comparable to BACP – which is generally required for counselling employment, I had to do three hours of cultural learning with a Māori person just to sign up to be a provisional member. So, I’d had that before I saw any clients. That was extremely helpful but also the bare minimum of preparation.

There’s an extra part of the accreditation process; a series of cultural readings and questions that you work through with a Māori person. You have to find this person, build a relationship with them, and work together. You provide a statement and they provide some reflections on that statement about your engagement. Once you’re a member, you do two CPD topics a year, and one of those topics is a cultural part.

NZAC is also working on other ways to make the process more accessible and culturally appropriate, for example through noho marae – staying at a meeting house for the weekend to take part in exercises, reflect on practice, and discuss work together, rather than relying solely on written work. It is clear that parts of this are still based on Western models, and there are ongoing efforts to make it more inclusive.

U&CC: In the UK, institutional responsibility for safeguarding has been widely discussed across the sector and in the media. What’s that like in NZ?

KC: We see quite a bit of suicidal ideation across our caseload. NZ’s suicide statistics show the youth suicide rate for adolescents aged fifteen to nineteen years was reported to be the highest of forty-one OECD/EU countries (based on data from 2010).¹ So, that’s also a big part of the work.

We have some people under eighteen because of the dance school, so safeguarding can be quite complex and the safety liaison would need to contact their parents. For adults living in halls, there is a strong emphasis on safety. This would involve a higher-level meeting with the person in charge of the halls, someone from counselling, and a next of kin if possible. If they are not living in halls, it is more complex and relies on contact with the crisis team or mental health emergency team, who advise on next steps and assess over the phone whether they need to attend in person or meet the student in the emergency department. I’d say that ninety per cent of the people I see who present with suicidal ideation are experiencing the aftermath of an attempt rather than currently in crisis. I’ve only had to call the crisis team twice in three years.

Following concerns raised after the death of a student on the South Island, the Pastoral Care Code placed additional responsibilities on universities to monitor student wellbeing and respond if students do not attend lectures. If people are not engaging with their studies, a system will flag this and someone will call to check they are OK. It is taken very seriously.

We share information between teams. The enquiry into the death of the student showed that everyone had a little bit of contact with this person, but no one had the big picture; if they had just talked to each other, it might have been prevented. So now if anyone has a concern about a student, they can flag it on a centralised system. Sometimes, my job is to update that system with whether or not that person is coming to counselling, or to share a safety plan (with the student’s permission).

U&CC: Another big topic here at the moment is the increase of a desire for labels, and particularly increases in students seeking ADHD or autism diagnoses. Have you seen the same?

KC: When I first started in the job, I don’t think I really understood ADHD at all and maybe thought it was being overused. But we had an educational clinical psychologist working with us for quite a while and she was super helpful in understanding its neurological basis.

I don’t think I really realised I was dismissing it until I wasn’t anymore – that was a mistake. It shows up a lot on our campus; we theorise this may be partly because it is an arts campus. The biggest challenges students describe are motivation, difficulty getting work in on time, huge amounts of shame and anger at themselves for not doing it. Many really want to be here, really loving their subject, but struggle to get themselves to complete the work. There can be a lot of frustration and self-criticism around that, which can be really distressing.

A university ADHD coach to support with practical elements would be so helpful, allowing me to focus on mental health support. In theory, that could be the disability team’s role, but in practice they’re already under significant pressure. In the meantime, we run an ADHD group to provide practical tools. It is partly effective, although it can be challenging to maintain consistent attendance and engagement. But it’s also very hard to get a large group of ADHD people to turn up on time.

I can offer an adult ADHD screener questionnaire; the results sometimes point in one direction or another. I might suggest talking to a GP about further assessment, or, if scores are lower, I may reflect that while they are clearly struggling with these things, it might not be ADHD – maybe don’t worry too much the label and we can work with the problems. We also talk about what a diagnosis can offer in terms of understanding and access to support, including the benefits of a psychological label, medication. However, medication on its own is often not enough to solve these problems. We can still do lots of behavioural work to help, so I try to encourage people to engage with that while they are waiting. Some of them are quite fixated on the idea that medication will fix everything and prefer to wait, it is difficult to shift that expectation.

People definitely talk about labels more, throwing around ‘boundaries’ or ‘narcissism’. Trauma or PTSD is sometimes a label that people give themselves, even when they may not have typical symptoms such as flashbacks or dissociation. But it’s not always helpful or productive to correct those labels, it’s more important to work with what the person needs.

U&CC: What sort of issues does the sector face on a national level?

KC: The NZAC workforce survey results² show a massive problem with services being defunded, little provision between a small number of free sessions and crisis-level intervention: too unwell for this service but you’re not well enough for this one. And school counsellors have been campaigning for funding because they’re having to deal with more complex things.

There’s availability in the private sector, but it’s not affordable for a lot of people. I think there’s a knock-on effect in HE because more people might come because it’s free at the point of access for them. They are trying to deal with some quite long-term, complex problems that would be better dealt with in private therapy over a long period of time, but they can’t afford it or they can’t find it. And if they’re over twenty-five, there aren’t really any free services.

Fees differ depending where you are. When I went to see a counsellor, it was one-hundred-and-thirty dollars, about seventy pounds per session. When I had my private practice, I charged fifty-five pounds and I thought that was quite a lot but that was also quite a while ago. Here, psychologists are seen as very different from counsellors and they charge a lot more. I have had quite a lot of people say to me ‘I’d like to see a psychologist’ and I often ask what they hope a psychologist will offer that a counsellor cannot. Sometimes it’s for OCD treatment and I can do that. There’s a hierarchy and a big pay disparity.

The other thing for counsellors is a lack of recognition of the qualification because we’re not on the healthcare professionals register – that’s psychologists and psychotherapists but not counsellors. Anyone can call themselves a counsellor, as in the UK, and that’s not great for our reputation.

U&CC: It seems you’ve really integrated the Te Tiriti principles into your life, is it something you think about outside of work?

KC: Completely. Other things that I’ve done to try and uphold Te Tiriti principles in my life include environmental work. There’s a plan in Wellington to eradicate all the rats, stoats and mice in the city, and I’m helping to get rid of the ones on campus. I see it as one way of living out Te Tiriti principles through environmental stewardship. How can I be a good treaty partner? I didn’t realise how integral it would be for the counselling work when I moved over here, it’s been an adjustment. It’s hard work but it’s really important.

It’s been a huge learning curve. I’d say if anyone’s thinking of coming to NZ to do counselling: get ready! I’m still learning lots.