What this research on resilience really asked of me — and of Skylight.
- Maddie Barrett
- 9 hours ago
- 6 min read
Kathryn, our CEO, took some time this week to write about her reflections on an article that came across her desk - Lived experience perspectives on resilience, mental health, and wellbeing: a focus group study of individual, social, and systemic determinants in Aotearoa New Zealand (BMC Public Health | Springer Nature Link)
Reading the latest lived-experience research on resilience and mental health, I was struck – and often humbled - by how clearly people described resilience not as a badge you earn alone, but as a collective web you are held by. That framing resonated deeply. It refocused resilience as not just an individual trait to be “fixed” or “trained,” but also as a relational capacity between people, whānau, communities, culture, and the natural world. Highlighting that those relationships need balance for wellbeing to take root.
My first thought: Resilience is a Relationship.
Throughout the article, I kept returning to the systems view; that resilience emerges from interacting determinants across individual, relational, and structural levels. In practice, that means we can’t separate a person’s coping skills from the safety of their housing, the fairness of their workplace, the water quality of their awa, the kai on their table, or the trust they hold in local services. When those layers line up, people flourish; when they don’t, even the strongest individuals are stretched beyond what’s reasonable.
This relational lens is why Te Whare Tapa Whā continues to anchor our practice at Skylight, with hinengaro, tinana, wairua, and whānau each needing care, and each sustaining the others. The whenua and the environment sustain and nourish us. More personally, it’s why the parks of London were so important to me when my first pēpi (and the second one) arrived. Walking became an everyday ritual that gave shape and purpose when life felt upside down. When we arrived back home in Aotearoa, it continued as the bush walks we took when dad was at work.
It’s also why the idea of extended and chosen family resonated. People described social connection and reciprocity - mutual support, trust, and obligations - as both a buffer against adversity and an active resource for recovery. That reminds me that “support” is not a service you receive; it is a relationship you’re part of. I’m glad for my whānau – the blood relatives and the ones I’ve chosen to call family, like the Chocolate Fish wāhine and the best chick at my wedding. Love you always.
My second takeaway: Purpose, Hope, and Agency – Personal and Collective.
Happiness and purpose repeatedly emerged as inextricably linked, and how that matters. It reminded me of the season after my baby’s birth, when simply pushing the pram to the park every day provided the purpose to steady me.
Equally powerful was this articulation of hope:
“It’s tough and it can get better. You have to recognise the dark to believe in the light.”
And how I could connect that to working at Skylight, where we help people move from the darkness to the light (gee, that got me).
I was moved by accounts of intergenerational hope and the possibility of ending intergenerational trauma - and by the participant who “lived without hope for 20 or 30 years” before reconnecting through poetry. It reinforced for me that resilience doesn’t always follow clinical timelines. It emerges, sometimes years later, through creativity, relationships, and reconnection. Passing strengths forward to the next generation came through as a profound, practical form of hope.
The notion that “It ends with me”. Powerful.
Agency mattered too - both the courage to want help and the collective agency of communities getting on with it. Time and again, people described communities acting for themselves, not waiting for something to happen. That aligns with what we see in our work and from my former time with the local government - the most enduring change is co-designed, locally led, and grounded in both cultural and community strengths.
A reflection: Let’s Name the Structural Realities.
Something else that struck me hard was the structural conditions that undermine resilience. Poverty increases health vulnerabilities. No one should have to choose between medication and kai. It serves as a reminder that five-hour waits in emergency departments, polluted rivers, the trade-offs between heat or food are not just “social determinants” but structural determinants. The term structural violence – the ongoing production of inequity through policy and systems - is language that is uncomfortable but appropriate.
It also reminded me to check my own advantage as a cisgender white woman - and the responsibility that comes with that privilege to advocate for fairer settings.
Financial security stood out as a fundamental protective factor. As one person put it: “How can you be resilient when you’re in survival mode every day?” That rang very true.
This research framed resilience and distress as syndemic - a term I hadn’t heard of before, but which we see all too often. Poverty, barriers to healthcare, mental health challenges, ecological loss, and racism amplifying one another in vicious cycles. In systems terms, people described feedback loops - some positive and generative, others negative and reinforcing, to help explain why individually focused interventions, on their own, often deliver limited or short-lived impact. If we don’t shift the conditions, we’re asking people to swim upstream forever, constantly fighting to get to the finish line.
My final takeaway: Situating Culture, Environment, and Time.
Cultural and spiritual beliefs and practice - and cultural revival - were described as powerful resilience assets. A notion that aligns with what we hear every day: identity, language, and connection to whenua and culture and whakapapa are protective in ways that clinical approaches alone seem unable to replicate.
Environmental decline was identified as directly reducing resilience, specifically this one line, “We’ve traded environmental health for economic growth, but what’s the real cost to our wellbeing?”. It reminded me that economic policy is health policy - and environmental policy too. Another idea to reframe my own perspective was a reference to “Indigenous temporalities” and non-linear time, which doesn’t move only forward; it spirals, returns, and layers.
These ideas remain with me to forefront how cultural backgrounds and differences work to make us stronger. Especially refusal - the choice not to engage on colonial terms - was named as a form of resilience. That challenged me in a good way.
What This Means for Skylight:
Here’s what I’m taking forward, and what I believe the sector must deliver:
Hold tamariki, whānau and relational wellbeing at the centre. Keep applying Te Whare Tapa Whā and include extended and chosen whānau.
Use tools that honour lived experience. Story mapping (which we use in Travellers) remains a powerful way to surface patterns, strengths, and next steps from people’s own narratives.
Confront structural determinants. Advocate for policies that reduce survival-mode living: income adequacy, housing security, and accessible, culturally safe care. If someone is choosing between medication and feeding their kids, it’s an impossible choice. Advocacy is a clinical response.
Invest in trust. Trust is both the bridge into support and often the support itself. We must be consistently present, accountable, and transparent - especially for those who have been let down.
Design with, not for. In addition to ensuring we are meeting the aspirations of our clients, we need to ensure society is investing in community-designed and community-led solutions that address multiple needs at once.
Measure what matters. We need more work on the wellbeing side of economic analysis in Aotearoa to understand the real bottom line. If our measures don’t see it, our policies won’t fix it.
Back Indigenous leadership. I’m excited by the potential of “Indigenous-designed, Indigenous-led, Indigenous-governed research and practice”.
Keep shifting norms. We’ve come a long way in removing shame around mental health; we must keep going - normalising support-seeking, naming trauma, and celebrating the everyday practices that keep us well.
A Closing Reflection
What resonated most for me is simple and demanding: resilience is a shared project. It lives in the quiet rituals (a pram pushed to the park), in the courage to ask for help, in the trust between neighbours, who is our whānau, our identity and in the health of our rivers. If we see resilience as a property of people and place, we are called to keep doing two things at once: strengthen individual and whānau capacities, and change the conditions that make wellbeing possible.
Let’s learn by doing things differently - together - and keep shifting the system so that hope and resilience aren’t a heroic act, but a reasonable expectation.
Read the article here:
