Dr. John Read spent 20 years as a clinical psychologist in the UK before moving to New Zealand in 1994, where he worked for 20 years as a clinical psychologist at the University of Auckland. It was there that he became acquainted with the Maori culture and their attitude toward and methods of helping individuals experiencing a psychological crisis. As he said “ It was very gratifying to see this whole culture just assuming that if there’s a problem, you need to get everybody together to talk about it. They never see the problem as located inside one individual. So they would just get together; it could be 10 people, 15-20 people, and they would just sit and talk about it in the context of the meaning of what’s going on for that person.”
John is currently Professor of Clinical Psychology in the University of East London’s School of Psychology and editor of the journal Psychosis. He has published over 140 papers in research journals, primarily on the relationship between adverse life events (e.g. child abuse/neglect, poverty, etc.) and psychosis.
