Meet Helen
Independent nurse consultant
RN, PhD, FNZCMHN
Dr. Helen P. Hamer is a skilled and experienced nurse consultant, who has worked in various settings for both physical and mental health. She has extensive experience in teaching and supervising clinical staff and peer support specialists. Dr. Hamer is an expert in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approaches and has delivered numerous workshops to individuals with a range of psychological distress. She holds a PhD and is a Fellow of the New Zealand College of Mental Health Nurses. Additionally, she serves as an honorary academic/researcher at the Centre for Citizenship at Yale University, USA.
Helen received her training and clinical supervision in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) through Waitemata DHB in 1996. She also completed a clinical placement at the Newcastle Cognitive Therapy Centre in the UK in 1997. In addition, she attended advanced CBT training with Christine Padesky in the USA and received DBT training with Marsha Linehan in Edinburgh, UK, in 1997. In 1999, Helen collaborated with a small Waitemata DHB team to establish a CBT therapy clinic and provide instruction for the Advanced Diploma in CBT at Massey University in Albany.
Helen has been working with Debra Lampshire since 2001 to model the alliance between consumers and clinicians in order to directly inform clinical practice. They offer workshops on CBT-based psychological strategies for distressing voices, with a focus on promoting a bicultural and equity-centred approach for Māori and their whānau/family. This approach emphasizes the spiritual and cultural aspects of voice hearing.
In her clinical practice, workshops, and publications, Helen continues to promote the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF), alongside biomedical understandings, to support a contemporary formulation for understanding psychosis and other extreme experiences. Her earlier family systems therapy training, and the critique by the 3rd wave of CBT scholars, confirmed Helen's appreciation of Dr Beck’s phenomenological underpinnings of CBT and his desire to increase the accessibility of the model to the most marginalised in society. This inspired Helen's doctoral research on social inclusion, citizenship, rights, and mental health law.
Helen and Debra collaborate to provide unique teaching and research initiatives. At present, we are conducting workshops that focus on therapeutic risk-taking and supported decision-making in anticipation of the repeal and replacement of the current Mental Health Act. To learn more about our wide array of workshops, please visit the workshops section of this website.
Helen has extensive experience in leading and facilitating systemic change and improving the skills of all staff in the use of psychological strategies in both primary and secondary care settings. She is available for consultation or project-related work and can be contacted any time.
Services
Helen Hamer and Associates offers consultancy, workshops and training, and system development services.
Helen partners with Debra Lampshire to deliver exclusive workships to increase the skills-base of all staff in the use of psychological strategies for long term conditions.
They also regularly offer consultancy services for research projects that directly informs mental health practice in the areas of social justice, rights, social inclusion, citizenship, and consumer-clinician alliance.
Services have also involved concept design and implementation of "whole of systems" change. For example, Helen recently developed and implemented a partnership between Mental Health & Addiction Services and Primary Care Setting in South Auckland.
Meet Debra
Experience-Based Expert
MNZM
Debra is an Experience-Based Expert. She has vast experience as a Lived Experience Consultant and facilitator of training workshops and professional supervision in national and international settings. Debra is a highly skilled
intuitive communicator whose life experiences enable her to develop sensitive and empathic relationships with a wide range of people. Debra offers the expertise gained from her own lived experience of voice hearing and recovery, complemented by the shared experiences of other voice hearers she has worked with within the last 30 years. These experiences have led Debra to develop and
share rich and powerful knowledge and skills to help others conquer their distressing voices.
Debra has an extensive background in developing psychological interventions for enduring mental illness, bringing an innovative approach to voice hearing for staff working within clinical settings. For example, Debra was instrumental in developing and leading the psychological strategies for positive symptoms of psychosis interventions
in Te Whatu Ora Auckland mental health services.
With a solid footing in the academic arena, Debra has led the way for service user voice in teaching, research and writing in University settings. She currently teaches in programmes at the University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology. Debra has presented papers about recovery and voice hearing at national and international conferences, co-authored/edited books and chapters, and has a body of work in refereed journals. She has also led the development of service users as co-researchers within academic settings and continues to offer training on the lived experience of mental distress and voice hearing experiences in Australia and at Ivy League universities in the USA.
Debra regularly speaks at public events and on television. You can view her TEDx Tauranga here, focused on an insider's guide to hearing voices.
Debra has been recognised for her contributions to mental health. She won the 'Making a Difference' category of the Attitude Awards and the Supreme Award at the 2016 Attitude Awards. The documentary Surviving Schizophrenia, in which Debra starred, received the Mental Health Health Services (TheMHS) Specialist Journalism Award. Debra is an Executive Member of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS) and committee Chairperson for the New Zealand ISPS committee. In 2023, she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to mental health.
Our Shared Decision Making Workshops
In 2018, He Ara Oranga signaled that the current government needs to take a multi system approach to reconsider beliefs, evidence and attitudes about mental health and risk (Recommendation 35).
Further, the current Mental Health (Compuslory Assessement and Treatment) Act (1992) has been widely criticised for being out of step with Te Tiriti o Waitangi and New Zealand’s other domestic and international human rights commitments.
In tandem with transformative law reform that is currently underway, this workshop will address a range of considerations required to shift the current risk averse nature of health systems, and the skills and knowledge required of health workers to enhance the human rights of people receiving care.