Getting to the Heart of the Story: Using Talanoa to Explore Pacific Mental Health

Abstract

Talanoa is an established format for generating discussion about complex topics used throughout the Pacific. Pacific researchers use talanoa to gather data with migrant Pacific Island populations, in countries such as the United States of America, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand (A/NZ). Using talanoa in this way, changes the way that the approach is used as, on the one hand it is out of its original context, and on the other hand, extends its use to gather data with Pacific Islanders. In this article, we discuss the implementation of talanoa in an explorative qualitative research project, and discuss its effectiveness and usefulness for getting to the heart of the story about Tongan interpretations of mental illness and distress.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks go to the participants of the talanoa for their time, energy, and commitment to the research.

Declaration of Interest: The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this paper.

FUNDING

The first author received a Pacific Health Research PhD scholarship from the Health Research Council of New Zealand.