Dr Mairin Taylor (left), of UC School of Health, and adjunct fellow Dr Kelly Tikao (Ngāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu) feature in a video for Mindkiwi, an early intervention programme for whānau with children living with ADHD using mindfulness methods and pūrākau.
University of Canterbury School of Health Sciences senior lecturer and clinical psychologist Dr Mairin Taylor, adjunct fellow Dr Kelly Tikao (Ngāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu) and consultant clinical psychologist Kathryn Whitehead have teamed up to create MindKiwi, a programme for whānau with tamariki who live with ADHD that utilised mindfulness methods and pūrākau – traditional Māori stories of the atua and ancestors that teach history and values.
The research and programme were made possible through philanthropic funding from Te Tītoki Mataora MedTech Research Translator, Cure Kids, the Oakley Mental Health Research Foundation, and the UC Child Well-being Research Institute.
“We’d already heard from the community that there’s very little out there for whānau who don’t want to go down the medication pathway,” said Dr Tikao.
“Even getting an assessment has been a source of frustration and stress for a lot of whānau,” added Dr Taylor, who also lives with ADHD.
MindKiwi is a unique project involving experts from various fields. As well as Dr Taylor, Dr Tikao Dr Whitehead, MindKiwi’s team also included digital artists, animators, M3’s Jase Te Patu, a wellbeing advocate who contributed segments on yoga with te reo Māori, and mau rākau (Māori martial arts) expert Aaron Hapuku.
While mindfulness often conjures up images of still meditation with zen New Age music, the reality is a bit different. Sitting still for a long time does not suit all tamariki with ADHD, so the team uses ‘mindful movement’ involving yoga or martial arts, which were a great way to get children interested in focussing on something.
It’s important to have an accessible and culturally sensitive early intervention programme because, without appropriate support, people living with ADHD are more likely to experience poor mental health, drug and alcohol dependency, emotional dysregulation, and other issues. Approximately 2 to 5 percent of the population is affected by ADHD.
MindKiwi is unique because while most interventions work with a child one-on-one, this programme takes a whole-whānau approach, empowering whānau by providing them with tools that they can use to help tamariki learn to focus better. In particular, there is a focus on siblings as well as parents and guardians.
“We know there’s far greater effectiveness … if adults and siblings are also involved doing things differently, then tamariki have a much greater shot at changing their ways of responding,” said Dr Taylor.
Involving whānau had a much greater benefit that reached beyond the child with the diagnosis. “In my background in working in adolescent and youth in-patient mental health care, I found that I was most concerned about those who weren’t able to access support because they were a sibling,” said Dr Tikao. “So they might not necessarily have a diagnosis. However, they may also be showing symptoms only they’re not as severe so they’re not at the forefront of their whānau’s attention.
“However, what I was finding were secondary issues that were coming through from the siblings, either of a different nature or of a similar nature, but they were often unseen and not part of the treatment programme.
“Therefore, there was a lot of sadness around that and, often, I found that eventually, those siblings would come into care, one way or another or had this hidden sadness that followed them for many years because they weren’t the child that had all the attention and their issues were less dealt with.”
Through involving the whole family, not only would the child presenting with symptoms receive the support they need, but siblings would also acquire tools that they could use to help themselves.
Initially, the programme was designed as something that would be implemented face-to-face. However, COVID came along and every time the team tried to run the programme with a test group, there was a lockdown.
Limited by their options but fuelled by the urgency of whānau they’d been talking to, the team, with consultation from participants, took MindKiwi online, working with a team of digital artists and animators to create engaging sessions for participants. They have also received feedback from child health practitioners that the programme was trauma-informed and could work for tamariki experiencing issues other than ADHD.
The team is excited to be rolling out the programme nationally and begin learning from it. The online programme had the benefit of being accessible to people based in more remote parts of the country.
Once the results come in from the pilot programme, the team will be working towards making the programme more comprehensive and developing it further for face-to-face interactions.
For more information about the programme, please visit their website at mindkiwi.org.nz.
