Mental health and Pasifika students’ intimate relatinships

20 November, 2014

Hookin’ up – Mental health and Pasifika students’ intimate relatinships

The mental health of young Pasifika tertiary students will be focus of a new study by University of Waikato psychology researcher Byron Seiuli.

The Health Research Council announced its career development awards today and awarded Mr Seiuli a postdoctoral research fellowship of $335,000 over three years to study the impacts that personal relationships have on Pasifika tertiary students’ mental health and wellbeing.

Mr Seiuli has a background in counselling and recently completed his doctorate at the University of Waikato.

He says tertiary students are usually at an age when they’re taking advantage of new freedoms and looking for partners.

“Pasifika students often come to university or polytech with intrinsic Pasifika values, often religious values, that sustain them in their studies and relational experiences, but what happens when they have to deal with difficult issues, such as an unplanned pregnancy? Do they go ahead and have the baby, do they seek other options, do they involve family in their decision making?”

Mr Seiuli says teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates are higher in this group than the general population and so are suicide rates. “So I would like to know if this is because these students don’t know how to handle relationships, or whether they struggle to make difficult decisions or engage in the decision-making process.”

Mr Seiuli plans to talk to students at Waikato University, various tertiary institutes in Auckland, in the South Island, and in Fiji, Samoa and the University of Hawai’i. He says the variety of locations will provide a good cross-section of Pasifika students, and enable him to track any similarities or differences in behaviours.

“Once we understand how social and cultural factors influence young people’s intimate partner relationships we’ll be able to develop effective, targeted sexual and reproductive health programmes and plans for better mental health care,” he says.

Project Manager for HRC Pacific Health Dr Nuhisifa Seve-Williams says Mr Seiuli’s research will help address a critical gap in the research. “High quality Pasifika health research is an important part of reducing disparities in health outcomes, and will lift the health and wellbeing status of our peoples,” he says.

Mr Seiuli also received HRC funding for his doctoral study, which began with a visit to Samoa after the 2009 tsunami. He went there as a counsellor to work with men who retrieved the bodies, and that experience led to his doctoral study which investigated how Samoan men addressed issues of death, burial and grief. He will have his doctorate conferred in April next year.

© Scoop Media