Ko Ngāpuhi me Hauraki ngā iwi.
Kō Ngāti Manu, Ngāti Hine, me Ngāti Tamaterā ngā hapū.
Kō Haki Davis tōku ingoa.
Nō Moerewa ahau.
Nō reira āpiti hono tātai hono, te hunga mate ki te hunga mate.
Āpiti hono tātai hono, te hunga ora ki te hunga ora.
Nō reira tēnā koutou katoa.
I’m married with two adult kids.
At the end of the day, without Margie’s support and the girls’ support
I'd probably be still out on the street.
I didn't know what a psychiatrist was, didn’t know what a mental illness was
didn’t know what the psychiatric system was.
I think it was in 1984 I began to develop a mental illness.
I remember going to Hastings, and I started to hear voices
for the first time.
I'd never experienced voices before.
So that was a really horrible experience for me
because I wasn't used to being afraid
and being afraid of someone else, of another person.
I don’t know how it happened, but I’d lost touch with reality.
For me, I think, seclusion comes in different forms and in different stages.
First of all, when you start developing a mental illness,
that’s the first type of seclusion that you experience.
because you've lost touch with reality so you're kind of isolated in your thinking
and in the way you viewed life.
The next kind of stage of the seclusion
is that you then may be introduced to a psychiatrist.
In some ways, you kind of get classified with a diagnosis of...
Some with paranoid schizophrenia, some with manic depression, and so forth.
So then you're introduced to the hospital.
That’s where you get secluded again, because you've been separated from
your family and friends, and you're locked away in a ward.
So you meet up with a new kind of community of people
who are on the same waka as you.
It’s all changed now, the seclusion room
from what I observed in my times in seclusion.
I spent probably about eight times, I think, in seclusion.
I've had good experiences in seclusion because usually, in my experience
the seclusion door is left open.
You know, you watch the world go by from the seclusion room.
So it's not like it used to be.
But it's... the last...
...time I was in the seclusion room was probably my worst experience of all.
My experience was in 2015, which was the last time I had been in hospital.
And it's a horrible time.
It's a horrible thing to happen to anyone.
The doctor was under the assumption
that I was taking 200 milligrams of clozapine.
So what he did was, he increased the medication to...
I think they call it a therapeutic level.
I'm non-compliant when it comes to medication.
Given half the chance, I won't take the meds.
I went for years and years without meds, and people thought I was taking my meds...
But, I wasn’t.
All I remember was feeling a stinging sensation.
I opened my eyes and I was on the ground in the seclusion room.
It's like a hard plastic.
The walls and the floor are made of plastic
and all you could see was the light coming through
the moon shining through the window.
It was freezing cold.
I opened my eyes again, and I'd fallen over again, hit my head on the ground
because I kept blacking out.
Then I remember another stinging sensation.
I opened my eyes and I was right up against the wall.
I was staring at the wall.
I kept on walking, crawling, into the wall, and then waking up
and wondering where I was.
So, eventually, I found my bed.
There was one blanket and a pillow.
So I ended up in bed, and then all I remember was waking up again
opening my eyes, and the nurse was just doing up my shirt
because she had changed me and cleaned me, cleaned me up.
She put me back on the bed.
So that’s the real seclusion that a lot of us
not all of us go through
but a lot of people go through in the mental health system.
That’s the real seclusion that I think a lot of...
Especially me, I was afraid of that.
My worst nightmare, the worst nightmare happened.
What they could have done, they should have checked to see that I was really
taking the medication when I arrived.
But that means you have to take a blood test and
a lot of us just want, when you get to the hospital
you don't want a blood test, you want to have a cup of coffee.
I think that de-escalation teams are a great idea.
I've been on the other side of the coin, where I’ve had to calm someone down.
I've got a wee bit of a taste of my own medicine, in some ways.
I thought that, you know...
You gotta be calm, cool and collected.
That’s not easy to be.
Yeah, if the doctor stays calm and the nurse stays calm, you stay calm.
That’s a form of de-escalation.
When I first got out of hospital
I had a place to retire to, which was the room
with all the photos of the chiefs and the rangatira in.
It was a place where my family provided for me
where I could just go away, and which I had to
after I got let out of the hospital in 2015.
I'm no expert on te ao Māori but I do know that
you're better off with a pepeha than without a pepeha.
I was able to access Māori mental health down here.
They're always open 24/7.
But I didn't want to access them down here.
I was a wee bit of a rebel in my family's eyes
because I wasn't interested in te ao Māori.
But it doesn't take away the fact that te ao Māori is so important for
tangata whaiora Māori.
So important.
I have to acknowledge the God who I believe in.
I've been hearing... A voice has been speaking to me
for the last 20 years.
An audible voice.
I’d like to explain it.
I can't explain it in two minutes
because it's been happening to me for 20 years.
24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The audible voice that I hear, it's been more of my medicine than
the anti-psychotic medication.
When I first got out of hospital, I had my nurse to talk to.
That was healing in itself, just having someone to talk to.
You see, with me, the talking worked.
My friend, my best friend down here, Wayne, encouraged me to talk.
He says, ‘Look, you're not talking, you need to say something.
You’re just sitting there not saying anything.’
So I found that it actually worked for me, that was learning how to talk.
Talking sessions were the key to my mental health and wellbeing.
It worked.
You have to get the basics right.
You've got to remember to wash every day.
You've got to remember to brush your teeth every day.
You've got to remember to make your bed every day.
You've got to remember to take your pills.
You have to remember that you've got food, you've got to eat
so you've got to cook.
So you've got to get all those basic stuff right.
That's what I call holistic.
The group that I'm involved with, Te Kete Pounamu
we're a national, regional, and local voice for tangata whaiora Māori
or for the Māori with lived experience in the mental health system.
We want to influence change
and improve the service to Māori with lived experience.
I thought it was a great idea that Johnny asked me to join Te Kete Pounamu
and to be the lead, because it sort of gave me a wake-up call
and reminded me of my roots and the challenges that I face
in te ao Māori.
I've been taught by my family
you think about, do something for someone else
because if you focus on someone else, it takes you off your own problems.