Narratives of transformation and recovery in New Zealand Defence Force personnel accessing mental health support

Abstract

Introduction:

Little is known about user experiences of accessing mental health care among active duty New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel. Although research exists on barriers to care and treatment outcomes, there is a dearth of understanding of the experiences between these two areas of focus. This study describes the narratives of 21 active duty personnel who sought mental health support in the NZDF health care system.

Methods:

Participant accounts were generated through semi-structured interviews and analysed using a narrative approach. The focus of analysis was to provide a deeper understanding of how participants storied their experiences from the onset of mental distress to recovery, with a focus on the narrative structure of these experiences.

Results:

Participant narratives often followed the progression of a quest narrative, mirroring the hero’s journey, which encompassed background factors leading to distress, chaos and breakdown, serendipitous connection to support, recovery, and redemption. Engaging with the health care system marked the beginning of personal transformation and posttraumatic growth. Transformation involved changing core beliefs and perspectives, leading to increased self-awareness and empathy and ultimately contributing to growth as individuals and leaders within the NZDF.

Discussion:

This study underscores the importance of understanding and facilitating posttraumatic growth in military personnel in both clinical and organizational contexts. It highlights the need for mental health messaging and support within military institutions to align with existing cultural values and narratives. Overall, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex journey of recovery and growth in military mental health care contexts.

Lay Summary

The way military personnel describe seeking support for difficult mental health experiences can highlight what helped recovery and what impeded it. This study examined stories of accessing care told by New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) military members to understand their unique perspectives on mental health recovery. In total, 21 NZDF military personnel who were treated for mental health concerns were interviewed. Results showed how personnel described experiences of being supported through the NZDF mental health system, how hard it was to seek help, and how challenging the process was to get better. In general, participants described positive outcomes, where they felt supported to recover and become better versions of themselves through the process. Results highlight that growth from mental health struggles for NZDF military personnel is possible and can be supported. Discussion focuses on things leaders and organizations can do to ensure military service members are encouraged to feel they are in control of their own recovery process.

Introduction

Narratives can be found in myths and legends since the dawn of humankind,¹ and narratives of soldiers and war have appeared since antiquity.² Constructing narratives is one of the primary ways in which humans make sense of the world and assign meaning to events,³ and the ways in which military personnel story themselves and their experiences are shaped by a variety of societal, institutional, and cultural values.⁴ Until recently, few studies had conducted narrative research with contemporary cohorts of military personnel.^5,6 Understanding the narratives service personnel commonly adopt is critically important because the types of stories people tell during periods of recovery from distress can have profound and long-lasting impacts on mental health.⁷ For instance, adult community patients whose narratives reflected an increase in personal agency over time were found to show improvements in their mental health during therapy.⁸ Improvement in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among trauma patients was found to be associated with an increased ability to generate healthy, balanced trauma-related beliefs (i.e., accommodation) in both brief expressive writing and gold-standard PTSD therapies.⁹ Similarly, themes of growth and agency were found to be associated with lower scores on measures of posttraumatic stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms among U.S. Veterans who wrote about stressful experiences during military service.⁵ In narratives of moral injury experiences, Afghanistan Veterans described a process of personal transformation in grappling with their experiences, as well as how difficult and important it was to open up and share with family, friends, and other Veterans.¹⁰ Similar narrative themes of taking control of the recovery process have been described by Veterans in group therapy, where a critical perspective change involved moving from being a passive recipient of care to an agent engaged in a “battle” in the “hard work” of therapy and healing.^{11(p. 222)}

Studies that examined the New Zealand (NZ) active duty or Veteran perspective of seeking support for military experiences identified the importance of culture, the impacts of service, as well as the barriers and facilitators around help-seeking. Military service in New Zealand is unique because of the fusion of British European military tradition and the Māori warrior culture.¹² Many NZ Veterans from both world wars and Vietnam describe aspects of posttraumatic growth (PTG) after service, which included a sense of gratitude, an appreciation for life and for living in New Zealand, and a change in life priorities.¹³ Interviews with Māori Vietnam Veterans, which included their spouses and adult children, also identified the intergenerational consequences of service, such as through exposure to toxins, as well as physical and psychological injuries.¹⁴ Social connectedness is often of central importance to the help-seeking and recovery experience among New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) military personnel and Veterans.^13,14 A recent study of the health and well-being experiences of Māori soldiers in the NZ army found that participants sometimes felt a lack of empowerment and meaningful autonomy over their own health and well-being decisions, for example, when experiencing pressure to return to normal duties despite sustaining injuries.^{15(p. 84)} Barriers to help seeking, such as not being aware of support resources, a reluctance to seek support because of a stoic sense of independence, and the perceived ineffectiveness of support options were common during interviews with NZ Veterans during the COVID-19 lockdown period.¹⁶

Navigating military mental health care systems

The patient perspective of seeking and obtaining mental health support among currently serving personnel is vital for understanding where barriers to care and opportunities for intervention exist.^17,18 Although approximately 5% of NZDF personnel seek mental health support annually,¹⁹ narratives of help seeking in this community are not as well documented compared with other allied nations.²⁰ The aim of this study was therefore to investigate how NZDF service members recounted their journeys through the NZDF mental health system and to address the gap in understanding their experiences between initiating support seeking and treatment outcomes.

Methods

Participants

Eligible participants were active duty NZDF personnel who had accessed support for any mental health matter and were referred to clinical psychology or psychiatry services. Those still undergoing treatment were ineligible. Participants were recruited via email outreach through existing NZDF support providers — psychologists, chaplains, social workers, and medical officers. Participants were assigned a random alphabetical identifier, and sample characteristics are presented in aggregate to protect participant identities. In total, 21 participants were interviewed: 9 air force, 7 navy, and 5 army. Years of service ranged from 2 to 29 years. There was a broad distribution of ranks that included 5 officers and 16 non-commissioned (enlisted) personnel. The age range was 19–52 years. Seven participants identified as Māori, 2 as Pasifika, and 12 were New Zealand European (Pākehā). Eleven participants identified as cisgender women, 9 as cisgender men, and 1 as a non-cisgender person. Participants described a wide variety of lived experience of mental distress, including depression, anxiety, combat trauma, PTSD, and moral injury (more details are provided in Grimm et al.).²¹

Ethical considerations

This research was approved by the Massey University Human Ethics Board and the NZDF Organisational Research Ethics Board. To facilitate frank participant accounts, a special NZDF military order was instigated to protect the interviewer (who was also currently serving) from obligation to report any potential military offences that could have been declared during the interviews (e.g., duty violations). Participation was voluntary, and participants received no remuneration for taking part.

Interview procedure and data collection

Interviews were conducted using an informal and semi-structured conversational format. Interviews were in person (one was conducted via Zoom due to COVID-19 disruptions) and varied from 60 to 150 minutes. The opening question aimed to encourage a narrative account and rich description: “Can you please tell the story of seeking help through the NZDF mental health system?” Periodically, participants were encouraged to provide more detail in their descriptions, for example, “Why did you choose to talk to the chaplain and not to another well-being provider?” All interviews were conducted by the first author. A description of Māori cultural protocols adopted during the interviews is described in Grimm et al.²¹

Narrative analysis

Participant accounts were analysed using narrative analysis.¹ A narrative approach to service personnel as storied beings is well suited to the exploration of how people make sense of, and bring order to, the disruption that illness produces in their lives.²² The focus in this study was on identifying illness narrative templates: restitution (i.e., yesterday I was healthy, today I am sick, but tomorrow I will be healthy again), chaos (anti-narratives of despair), and quest narratives (i.e., the hero’s journey).^23,24 A similar analytical approach was used to explore UK Veterans’ experiences of recovery from physical and psychological trauma.²⁵ Audio recordings of interviews were transcribed and coded to identify aspects of narrative structure and subplots. Researcher reflexivity and reflection on the construction of the narratives occurred during frequent researcher supervision among the authors.¹

Results

Participant stories of accessing care through the NZDF mental health system frequently followed the contours of a quest narrative.^23,26 A shared progression was described, from background and onset factors to chaos and breakdown, serendipitous connection to support, and recovery as an ongoing process and concluding with reconnection to important relationships and redemption.

Origins: Background factors and mental distress onset

When discussing the circumstances surrounding the onset of mental health experiences, participants often described a combination of childhood factors, as well as specific triggering events. Several participants disclosed experiences of abuse, including sexual abuse, before enlistment. Many participants described how they could trace the impact of these events experienced in childhood to the subsequent onset of mental illness while in uniform:

And in that moment it just triggered all these emotions. All this repressed stuff that came bubbling to the surface … I realized all this anxiety and depression and self-medication with alcohol has been as a consequence of what happened to you. (Participant N)

Participants described how mental distress was precipitated by a complicated intersection of military service and non-military life events. Stress from relationship conflict was commonly storied as a key variable contributing to mental distress, and a broad range of relationships were implicated, such as with partners or spouses, family members (parents, children), leaders, managers, and colleagues. The onset of mental distress was often compounded by sleep disturbances due to duties (e.g., shift work) and alcohol use and intertwined with military factors, such as being away from home on overseas exercises or deployments:

My ex-partner was saying that he thought I prioritised my work over him and not getting back to New Zealand to help him through some of the stuff he was going through. (Participant T)

Started drinking a lot [on overseas duties] as well ‘cause that’s really bad like [military] culture … when my ex broke up with me I just had really bad anxiety and I didn’t know what was going on with me and I just stopped sleeping straight away … So yeah, my emotional resilience just went out the window. (Participant O)

Participants described this stage of their stories in terms of disorientation and lacking a clear sense of direction. Many participants noted that they lacked even the language to convey to others what they were experiencing at that time:

So that’s when I realized I was like struggling with something and I didn’t know how to really handle it kind of thing … I just felt lost. I didn’t know what I was doing, felt out of place. How do you even explain that? “I don’t know where I am.” (Participant I)

Despite a growing recognition of mental health problems, many participants described how committed they remained to managing difficulties on their own. Several participants had not even recognized support was an option to consider:

No, it didn’t occur to me at all to get help honestly, like for me when I think about it, I was like I can get through this. I don’t need help, I’m strong I can do it by myself … but I think it just got too much. (Participant Q)

All participants described various ways of hiding their distress, and many reflected on how well versed they had become in projecting a competent image: “Because that’s what I’ve gotten good at for 20 some years, man, you know, really good at just pretending, playing the part.” Participants’ narratives revealed a multifaceted relationship with work duties as both a source of stress and a resource for structure and stability:

There was definitely like a period of quite a few months. I was pretty bad, I was real bad … I would go to work, be real terrible, and as soon as I like turn the corner and head into Camp then boom that facade would come over and I’d just be on-point at work, nobody needed to know anything. (Participant L)

The duration of managing distress alone varied from months and years to decades. During this period, participants described using a variety of coping techniques, including self-medicating, such as with alcohol, and strict control of diet and exercise. Several participants described adverse impacts of mental health distress on their duties, and others described “functioning while suffering:”^{27(p. 460)}

Like I can tell you right now between 2003 and maybe 2012, 2013, a solid decade, I didn’t even know I needed help, right? I just thought I was dealing with stuff and I was the man and everything was cool as. At the height of my depression, outwardly I’m projecting this like amazing I’m awesome … but the only thing I felt I could control in my life at that time was my diet and exercise. So, I was just like eating nothing and exercising a lot. So then I felt, you know, “Oh, look at me. I’m controlling a thing,” right? I wasn’t happy at all. (Participant R)

And it got so bad that I was literally sitting at my desk and at that point in time like I would have been the one in the room that was smiling the widest, laughing the loudest. Yet driving to work thinking “Oh what if I just turned my car this way?” Not because I wanted to, but because my anxiety was so intense at that time and also again, probably drinking up to a bottle and half of wine at this point a night like every night. (Participant N)

Crossing the threshold: Connecting to the health care system

Participants consistently described how it took considerable mental distress before they were ready to engage with support or before distress was finally either noticed or commented on by others. Mental distress included descriptions of self-harm, suicidal ideation, and attempts:

I did need someone to tell me that you will get better. You will get through this. Because at that point I didn’t think I would … I thought this was literally going to kill me. I just felt like I wasn’t going to survive it, to be honest. (Participant A)

Participants storied this phase of their narratives as among the most difficult times of their lives and mirrored aspects of the hero’s journey of entering the abyss — involving physical, emotional, and social suffering.^23,24 Added to this distress, participants described in various ways how difficult and almost insurmountable crossing the help-seeking threshold was: “It’s just that first step is the hardest.” Even when talking with support providers, many described failing to connect to care that was helpful or not realizing they were not providing the cues necessary to communicate the severity of their impairment and distress. In the hero’s journey, crossing the threshold can often involve support from a key figure or helper.²³ Participants described that having someone to help them get into the health care system was often essential — and also that this encounter was unplanned and frequently by chance:

I went to the gym, the Padre [chaplain] just happened to be there, first thing he always says to me is “How are you?” and I was like “Oh my God” and just broke down and then that’s when I found out that you know, I could get support and what my options were. (Participant B)

It got to a point where I let a friend in and they were like, “Look. You can’t continue to go this way, I care about you, so if you don’t go and seek support, I’m going to effectively tell on you,” but it was like they were doing it from a place of care and compassion. And so at that point in time I was like, OK, fine, I need, I need to go and see someone. (Participant F)

Beginning the journey home: Transformation and recovery

Participants often described becoming engaged in the health care system as a key turning point in their narratives, marking the beginning of personal recovery and re-storying. This transformation process frequently involved descriptions of changing core beliefs and perspectives. Several participants described how they changed their attitudes toward mental health, from being something foreign that never applied to them to being something with which they were now intimately familiar: “It’s not until I went to my own dark place … I just didn’t get it, you know? And now I get it.” Some participants described their transformation as the most extreme version of a quest story in terms of becoming someone else entirely:²⁴

I grew so much in those [therapy] appointments … It gave me a safe place to go and put everything that was stuck in my head and in my heart … But you know now that I look back on it, I felt so broken that I just didn’t know what to do but cry. And so when I was able to start talking about it, I was like, oh man, it’s like a release … I feel like a completely different person. (Participant D)

Engaging in therapy opened new behavioural possibilities, and participants described the various ways in which the recovery process resulted in them being better able to appreciate alternative narratives:²⁸

I definitely had a very kinda I guess fixed mindset, close minded sort of mentality when I joined … I would probably call people “soft cocks” back in the day you know, if they were struggling, “well take a concrete pill.” You know, the classic line. But yeah, definitely I can see there’s usually a bit more to it now … everyone’s got a story, everyone’s got a history. (Participant J)

Participants also described their iterative, at times messy and inconsistent, recovery timeline, with several participants narrating regressions and periods of slow or no progress. For example, one participant described a sporadic relationship with accessing support: “But I’ll still get low. And just deal with it. The road after that is just back to work as usual … To be honest, I’ve probably had a good six years on or off counselling.” One participant described the recovery back to full-time duties as a series of slow progressive steps:

I wouldn’t say that I wasn’t in a very good headspace to come back to work in the first place, but I kind of had to … just trying to get me back and into a routine of coming back to work … then I would extend, increase my work hours and then I would go to four days a week, half days and five days a week. You know and then start increasing the time you know finish at two or finished at three and it took me a whole year to get back up to full time work. (Participant B)

Reconnection and re-storying

Part of the recovery process often involved reconnection with important people or communities within the NZDF. Some participants described re-storying themselves back to the organization in a way in which they reconnected with a sense of worthiness and positive contribution to their community:

We ended up in the base theatre with all [of my trade] … So, I spoke for myself and just kind of again said “Look, this is where I went [to get mental health support]. This is why and holy shit, despite what happened, I wouldn’t ever change it, I’m so glad I did what I did.” And then after that people came up to me and congratulated me, or said, “Hey thanks you know I’ve had this issue, what do you think about that?” The learnings I’ve had I felt like in an appropriate way, I hope to try and share with people. (Participant D)

Others reconnected with important central characters in their narrative of trauma, for example, family members or the spouses of deceased comrades:

You know, and [my best friend’s widow] reiterating to me to my face that it wasn’t my fault, you know. That was good, but I wouldn’t have got there if I hadn’t started the counselling … before I’d started this counselling process it would just not have come up. You wouldn’t have got through the steel veneer that I had up at all times. (Participant R)

Elements of PTG were evident in participant reflections on how far they had progressed in recovery. The growth they described often involved opening up to new ways of being in relationships to themselves and significant others. Importantly, participant stories reflected the positive contribution their mental health recovery had, not just for themselves but also for their closest relationships and extending to their duties within the NZDF:

I think I’ve grown more in the last couple of years than I did in the 10 years previous. Definitely know myself better than I ever have … on my way to be a bit more authentic I think after all this. My experience has definitely helped me as a leader armed with a few more tools, more empathy, more compassion. (Participant J)

I will never be the man I was before the [traumatic event], but I’m a better man now than I was. And my wife says it quite often, that she’s getting her husband back piece-by-piece. Without a shadow of a doubt, the help I’ve got has been a force multiplier in me basically being alive. (Participant R)

Discussion

This study examined the narratives of 21 active duty NZDF personnel who accessed mental health support through the military mental health care system. Participant narratives frequently followed a better-than-before story arc, where growth and change in core beliefs redeemed earlier periods of chaos and struggle. The structure of the stories in this study showed remarkable similarity to research in allied militaries, such as the difficulty of dropping the “mask of competence,”^{29(p. 425)} feeling lost with one’s distress,²⁵ a crisis catalysing an inflection point of change, and the gradual process of recovery.³⁰ The narratives of social reconnection and change in personal priorities described by service members in this study align with the qualitative synthesis of PTG themes in military samples and also with stories told by earlier generations of NZ Veterans.^13,14,31 Although the idea that trauma can lead to transformation is rooted in ancient philosophical traditions and religions,³² the importance of narratives in the development of PTG among the military and Veterans has become much more salient with recent conflicts.³³ Participants in this study retold their experiences by adopting the quest narrative — “humanity’s oldest structure” — of the call to change, rejecting the call, suffering and transformation, followed by the renewal of relationships based on a new understanding.^{26(p. 86)} Importantly, of the wounded storyteller templates, the quest narrative structure affords most agency to the recovered storyteller; chaos stories are consumed with unredeemed suffering, and restitution narratives often centre the triumph of an intervention (i.e., it was the medication that fixed me).²⁴ The adoption of this template is informative, because narratives of agency and growth are associated with positive mental health outcomes among both civilians and Veterans.^5,8

Clinical and organizational implications

Given that the hero’s journey storytelling structure appears to be associated with benefits to military personnel, it is important to consider how it may be encouraged in both clinical and organizational contexts. Several areas have been identified as clinically relevant when seeking to facilitate and support PTG in the military and Veterans in therapeutic approaches: psychoeducation around trauma and PTG, emotional regulation skill building, the facilitation of meaningful self-disclosure, narrative development, and living in accordance with new values often in service to others.³³ Additionally, clinical approaches to PTG can often involve an integration of approaches, such as cognitive-behavioural, narrative, existential, and interpersonal therapies.³⁴ One program for Veterans that adopts this approach using residential and online follow-up components was found to support mental health improvements across a range of metrics (e.g., PTSD, PTG, psychological flexibility).³⁵ Central to this program, and critical to the recovery of participants in the current study, is expert companionship — the presence of a supporter or clinician who appreciates the paradox and ambiguity of trauma recovery and the often messy process that can take months or years.³⁶

In addition to therapeutic considerations, there are organizational implications from this study and others that highlight the importance of “spreading good stories.”^{26(p. 82)} Culturally available narratives of trauma, coping, and growth can provide templates that can aid or hinder PTG in the aftermath of a crisis.³⁷ Other authors have advocated that mental health messaging be framed for military audiences in ways that fit their already existing culture and values.¹¹ For example, instead of viewing combat as potentially traumatic, this and other types of military service can instead be approached as some of the most challenging and life-changing experiences that hold the potential for significant personal growth.³⁸ How leaders talk about this also matters, because specific leadership behaviours that influence how subordinates create meaning from hardship were found to moderate the impact of combat stress on mental health in U.S. soldiers.³⁹ Role-modelling narratives is also an important cultural transmission of available recovery journeys,⁴⁰ as participants in this study demonstrated by sharing their recovery stories with their colleagues and peers.

The Invictus Games Foundation is an organizational-level example of supporting PTG through sport for wounded, injured, and sick servicemen and women.⁴¹ The games have adopted the “Invictus” poem (invictus means unconquered in Latin) by William Ernest Henley as their core narrative of overcoming adversity and frequently reinforce the lines “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”⁴² Interestingly, here again agency features powerfully in key messaging to Veterans and their communities. Altogether, the current research, as well as other examples and literature, highlight the importance of finding ways to cultivate an attitude of empowerment when supporting military personnel in their mental health recovery.

Despite the possibility of growth after trauma, it is not inevitable or linear — the process of disruption to core beliefs and the resulting struggle with meaning-making is what may result in PTG.³⁷ Participants in this study frequently framed recovery in ways that were considerably more nuanced than simply progressing through the NZDF mental health care system. Although quest narratives have redemptive features, they are rooted in suffering and may nevertheless risk romanticising the mess of those who experience significant illness and injury. They can also risk deprecating those that do not live up to the “phoenix rising from the ashes” level of personal transformation.^{24(p. 135)} Many participants in this study storied their distress as a protracted period of struggling alone, and it took considerable time before their level of distress crossed a threshold significant enough to either seek support or be noticed by even those closest to them, aligning with literature on recovery among military personnel as a dynamic, complex, and iterative process.^43,44 This poses considerable challenges to military health care systems that are tasked with either the expedient return of service members to full duty or their removal from service through medical discharge.⁴⁵

Strengths and limitations

This study was qualitative and exploratory and therefore is not representative of all NZDF mental health experiences. Ongoing NZDF workforce research will be needed to confirm statistical generalizability to the wider population. Although there was broad representation of ranks in this study, there was a lack of senior ranks, and attitudes toward help-seeking have been found to vary along this dimension.⁴⁶ For instance, in NZDF research, junior ranks endorsed more stigma barrier survey items that indicated lower intentions to seek help compared with senior enlisted and officers. Senior officers were found to most frequently endorse items associated with help-seeking intentions,⁴⁷ and future research will be needed to establish whether the recovery narratives found in this study extend to senior members of the NZDF.

There were no identified gender differences in narratives in this research, despite previous NZDF survey research identifying statistically higher help-seeking intentions among female service members compared with males.⁴⁷ The gender composition of participants in this study is possibly representative of a higher inclination to come forward and discuss mental health topics within NZDF — more than half of the participants, but only 20% of the currently serving NZDF regular force, are women. Nevertheless, in this study, the description of hiding distress was common to all participants, regardless of gender. All genders were represented in suicidal distress, and cisgender males and females and non-cisgender individuals all described the challenge of crossing the help-seeking threshold. Future research should seek to identify how differences in gendered help-seeking intentions may translate into different rates of accessing care among NZDF personnel.

Conclusion

This study identified stories of using the NZDF mental health care system from precipitating events to outcomes. The process of recovery was described as conferring many benefits for active duty participants; however, the journey to being better than before was more complicated than simply accessing clinical services. The narrative arc of participant accounts in this study has lessons for how mental health is discussed within military institutions, particularly around how service members can be empowered to reclaim a sense of agency in military mental health cultures and how leaders can promote resources for meaning-making during times of struggle and hardship. The quest narrative fundamentally involves transformation and positive personal change and is a natural complement to the current generation of modern-day warriors.

Biographies

Carsten James Grimm, MSc, is a registered psychologist in the Directorate of Health, New Zealand Defence Force. He was formerly a Royal New Zealand Air Force Iroquois pilot and is a Veteran of four operational tours to East Timor, the Solomon Islands, and Afghanistan. Research interests include mindfulness in the military context, military and first responder cultures, and recovery from traumatic stress. He is a clinical psychology doctoral candidate at the School of Psychology, Massey University.

Ian de Terte, PhD, is an associate professor and clinical psychologist. His clinical and research interests include resilience, coping mechanisms, high-risk occupations, work-related trauma, and traumatic stress. He has conducted clinical and research projects in Thailand, Pitcairn Islands, United Arab Emirates, and the Philippines. He is a former member of the New Zealand Police and the New Zealand Defence Force.

Darrin Hodgetts, PhD, is the professor of Societal Psychology at Massey University, New Zealand. Hodgetts’ research focuses on societal and health inequalities. His recent book-length publications include the Handbook of Precarious Work, Sage Handbook of Applied Social Psychology, Asia-Pacific Perspectives on Inter-cultural Psychology, Social Psychology and Everyday Life (2nd ed.), and Urban Poverty and Health Inequalities. Hodgetts has research collaborations in Brazil, Vietnam, and Indonesia. He served in the New Zealand Defence Force as a senior non-commissioned officer and officer.

Lt.-Col. Steve Kearney, MSc, MClin, PGCERT Health (Māori), is the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) Chief Mental Health Officer. Kearney joined the NZDF in 2000 and has served in diverse roles, including support to units, service members, training, operations, and command positions. Kearney is a registered clinical psychologist, a chartered organisational psychologist, and a graduate of the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College. Research and applied interests include work and mental health and mental health in the military context.

Funding Statement

No funding was received for this article.