Positive Mental Health and Its Promotion: A Bicultural Perspective and Narrative Synthesis from Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

<jats:p>Positive mental health frameworks in Aotearoa New Zealand have largely been shaped by Western individualist assumptions and have given limited attention to Indigenous and bicultural understandings of wellbeing. This article examines positive mental health and its promotion in Aotearoa New Zealand, through a bicultural lens grounded in &lt;em&gt;Te Tiriti o Waitangi.&lt;/em&gt; It reports on two cross-cultural mental health searches and discusses several models of health from te Ao Māori (the Māori world). Based on the view that positive mental health (and, indeed, health as a whole) is both constructed and contextual, our understanding of it in Aotearoa New Zealand must reflect the nation’s bicultural foundation and obligations. Māori models of wellbeing are advanced as offering holistic, culturally grounded, relational, and equity-oriented frameworks for understanding positive mental health, challenging Western atomism and individualism while aligning with international calls for inclusive, contextual, and culturally responsive approaches to wellbeing. Drawing on &lt;em&gt;Te Tiriti o Waitangi&lt;/em&gt;, the article proposes a meta‑theoretical framework for positive mental health that is both locally grounded and globally relevant, suggesting that Tiriti-informed approaches may offer valuable insights for culturally responsive mental health thinking in other national and Indigenous contexts.</jats:p>