Jenny Nicholls reviews Old Black Cloud: A cultural history of mental depression in Aotearoa New Zealand by Jacqueline Leckie for Waiheke Weekender:
‘Another book with a medical theme, this intriguing history of mental health treatments in New Zealand has been somewhat hamstrung by New Zealand’s draconian privacy laws. The academic study of mental health treatment before the middle of last century appears virtually impossible, as patient records are sealed long after their death. Given contemporary New Zealand’s issues with mental health, this seems less than ideal.
Nonetheless, this book by Dunedin mental health researcher Jacqueline Leckie marks an important (and poignant) milestone in tackling a subject which deserves more transparency.
Leckie explores historic patient records, and is helped in her analyses by her own experience of depression. If there are many inexpressibly sad stories here, there is also a reckoning of the effects of isolation and disconnection from whānau, hapu, iwi and community, and the transition between traditional Māori ways of coping with mental illness and early colonial mental-health infrastructure, such as it was.
Think of Herina K. a widow who died in an asylum over 100 years ago after setting fire to a farm house. According to her son, “she digs in the ground, and says she has a house there and she wishes to get it.”
Mental health also had a seismic effect on the arts – to take just one example, the toxic Kiwi male creed to ‘be a man’ ‘grin and bear it’ and ‘she’ll be right,’ explored in novels by writers like Maurice Gee, Stevan Eldred-Grigg, Witi Ihimaera, Alan Duff, and countless others.
The author also covers the revolution in mental health care in New Zealand since the1990s, the move away from asylums, and disturbing inequalities in mental health outcomes which are still with us.
There is much to unpack in this book of true stories, beautifully packaged and indexed by Massey University Press.’
