News & Events
Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another.
Henri Nouwen
In Defence of Men
The fragile dynamic between the sexes has always been somewhat fraught. Thirty years ago, American relationship counsellor John Gray seemed to hit both a nerve and a gold mine when he managed to shift more than 15 million copies of his bestseller, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Since then, things appear to have […]
Member of MSA’ Ropu Tautoko recognised in Queens Birthday honours
One man’s contribution to more than 50 years of fighting institutional racism in the judicial system have been recognised with a Queen’s Birthday honour. Dr Oliver Sutherland worked in and alongside groups like the Nelson Māori Committee, the Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination, and others from the 1970s onwards, fighting to bring about a […]
More details revealed of extent of abuse reports against Catholic Church
More details have been revealed as part of ongoing research into the extent of reports of abuse in the Catholic Church – but survivors say it is not an accurate reflection of the abuse that happened. The continuing research is being undertaken by Te Rōpū Tautoko, the group that coordinates Catholic Church engagement with the Royal […]
The Manchester Attack Support Group Programme: modelling a psychosocial response to collective trauma
An article discussing a support group programme initiated in response to the Manchester Arena attack in 2017 as an example of a psychosocial approach to post-disaster support. Its purpose is to highlight how a bespoke psychosocial peer-based initiative can complement and enhance mental health responses following collective trauma events. It gives an overview of psychosocial […]
Does Gender Affect Judges’ Perceptions of Sexual Assault Cases?
There is growing recognition that females engage in harmful sexual behaviour that is similar in severity and type to males. Existing research, however, suggests that there is a bias towards leniency in judicial systems for female sexual offenders (FSOs) in comparison to male sexual offenders (MSOs). Specifically, FSOs receive shorter sentences than do MSOs and […]
A Solitary Place: a phenomenological examination of male on-male rape and sexual abuse
Male-on-male rape is a critically under-researched area in the sexual violence literature. This is in part due to narratives that portray sexual violence as a female-only issue, which has led to substantial gaps in the current knowledge on male-on-male survivors’ experiences. However, evidence suggests that male sexual violence is prevalent and carries significant psychological consequences […]
Disclosure of Child Sexual Abuse: Experiences of Men Survivors in India
Sexual abuse of boy children is a significant but under-acknowledged and under-addressed problem globally. The worldwide prevalence of sexual abuse of boys is estimated to be 3–17 per cent (Barth et al., 2013). In India, Ministry of Women and Child Development (2007) conducted a large-scale national study of children aged five to eighteen years and found that 52.94 […]
Acceptability of Peer Support for People With Schizophrenia in Chennai, India: A Cross Sectional Study Amongst People With Lived Experience, Caregivers, and Mental Health Professionals
Establishing structured peer support in mental health, particularly for people with schizophrenia, as a psychosocial intervention is early in low and middle-income countries like India. Before implementing and understanding the effectiveness of peer support service and which mode of peer support delivery will be suitable for our culture, our study aimed to understand if peer […]
What Makes Intentional Unidirectional Peer Support for Homeless People Work? An Exploratory Analysis Based on Clients’ and Peer Workers’ Perceptions
Homeless people are increasingly supported by peer workers in one-on-one mentorship relations, called intentional unidirectional peer support (IUPS). Intentional unidirectional peer support refers to “a formalized mentorship type of peer intervention where the peer is clearly more advanced and is mentoring the client in an organized fashion” (Barker et al., 2020). Research investigating the effectiveness […]
The Best of Both Worlds”: Experiences of young people attending groups co-facilitated by peer workers and clinicians in a youth mental health service
Peer Support is an emerging discipline within mental health services (Slade et al., 2014), providing opportunities for positive role modelling and peer influence (Faulkner & Basset, 2012). The embodiment of recovery by peer workers disrupts for service users the “chronicity of their patient role” (p. 884) reinforced by models of care focusing on symptom reduction and illness […]
Traumatic, long path to change
For five long years, survivors of abuse at the hands of Dunedin clergy have waited to see if a reminder of the city’s dark past would be removed. The news that they had succeeded was greeted with relief, but the handling of the investigation into Bishop John Kavanagh has come under fire. PIJF reporter Daisy […]
One in six Australian university students say they have been sexually harassed. How can this be stopped?
Australian university students have shared harrowing stories of sexual harassment and assault in a damning new report that shows the prevalence of these incidents at institutions across the country. In what was labelled a “difficult day” for the university sector, a study of almost 44,000 students released on Wednesday found that one in six students […]