Tā mātou taurangi ki te hunga wheako ora Our commitment to lived experience
We have promised to uphold a ‘nothing about us, without us’ approach and to work together to improve wellbeing and transform the mental health and addiction system. We monitor lived experience leadership and participation across the system and advocate for improvement.
Our Lived Experience Position Statement, updated in 2025, outlines what we will do to uphold these commitments to lived experience communities.
In all our work, we prioritise the voices and interests of people who experience mental distress, substance harm, gambling harm or addiction. Through our Lived Experience Position Statement, we commit to doing this by:
- Privileging the experiences and aspirations of tāngata whaiora and tāngata mātau-ā-wheako Māori
- Amplifying the voices of people who have experienced or overcome loss, harm, or exclusion as a result of practices in the mental health and addiction system, or through being denied support
- Treat lived experience as an unfinished sentence, asking ourselves “lived experience of…?” for each project or area of work that we undertake, so that we involve people with directly relevant personal experience in each project
- Monitoring together – the issues people share with us to inform our monitoring, and we talk to people with lived experience when we monitor wellbeing and when we monitor what is happening in the mental health and addiction system
- Value and utilise lived experience by drawing on lived expertise by drawing on lived experience wisdom. Research, methodologies, practices, lived experience roles, social movements, and leadership
- Prioritise our projects and focus areas based on their importance to people with lived experience.
Read and download our Lived Experience Position Statement
Lived Experience Position Statement (A3 poster), July 2025 (PDF 468KB)
Lived Experience Position Statement (text), July 2025 (PDF 377KB)
Nau Mai te Ao
Nau Mai te Ao sits behind our Lived Experience Position Statement, as a discussion document that shares how we have explored understanding, honouring, and working with lived experience.
Nau Mai te Ao is a resource both for Te Hiringa Mahara and for other organisations working in mental health, addiction and broader wellbeing.
Read and download our Nau Mai te Ao discussion document