The Te Anau woman is completing a PhD through the Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago on rural community connections and mental health, and how land use change affects that.
The reason she chose the topic was to make positive change and she hoped the research would inform government policy around forestry conversions, and to strengthen applications for funding from small rural communities.
Having recently received ethics approval for her research, Mrs Wright was starting with a scoping survey in Otago and Southland before seeking interview participants in Lawrence and Omakau for one-hour interviews.
Those two towns were selected as Lawrence was experiencing high volumes of forestry conversion, while Omakau seemed to be the opposite, she said.
While there were plenty of stories in the news about land-use change, and people were talking about it, no-one was ‘‘actually looking at it properly’’, she believed.
It was important to look at how it affected people and their mental health. There was plenty of research on forestry itself, and some on community connection, but the two had not previously been joined.
About 20% of her thesis was on the loss of productive land to forestry conversions. She had looked at different types of land-use change — dairy cows, urban sprawl and forestry — and forestry was ‘‘head and shoulders’’ the biggest threat to rural communities, she said.
The other 80% was on the benefits of connection in small rural areas, which could come through organised groups and clubs like sporting organisations, Young Farmers, Rural Women New Zealand or even just meeting neighbours or friends.
Human connection was ‘‘absolutely crucial’’ to good mental health, and she was aiming to understand what the effects were when opportunities for connection were removed and how a dwindling population had flow-on effects to mental health.
As well as the survey, which was for anyone who identified as rural in Otago-Southland and was 18 or over, and the interviews in Lawrence and Omakau, she would also interview key informants including the likes of Beef + Lamb New Zealand and Federated Farmers and others with a particular stance on the topic.
While the research was in Otago and Southland, Mrs Wright intended it to be generalised for the rest of the country, as other areas had similar issues.
Mrs Wright initially did a social services degree in counselling to become a counsellor and then decided more needed to be done. Her master’s research was on barriers to young rural men seeking help.
At the moment, due to her PhD commitments, she was working two days a week with mainly rural people throughout the country.
She was also a mental health first aid instructor conducting two-day courses to teach people on the ground about basic mental health first aid care, just like physical first aid.
She was keen for the likes of farm and stock managers and those involved in sports clubs to sign up, saying while there was a shortage of mental healthcare everywhere, it was mainly in rural areas.
Mrs Wright is on the board of the charity Mental Hunts, which aimed to provide resources, support and education to promote better mental health and wellbeing among hunters.
She also taught social services about how to be ‘‘ag-informed’’ — explaining about the agricultural year, how to relate to rural people and to understand what challenges they encountered.
