Egan Bidios works in specialist Maori mental health services in and around Wellington, New Zealand. He works alongside the district health board to ensure that policies and procedures are inclusive of Maori perspectives on health and healing. Egan is also involved within a number of local and national ‘Tangata Whaiora’ groups. Tangata Whaiora means ‘people seeking wellness’, and is a term that some Maori (and, increasingly, non-Maori) use instead of phrases like ‘people with experience of mental illness’. Egan hears voices and sees visions, understanding his experiences within the context of Maori culture:

What do I experience? Something that I’ve experienced as a child, something that has matured as I have matured, something that was seeded within me from the beginning – even before me. In some ways I am experiencing inevitability. I am experiencing Whakapapa. I am experiencing what others before me have.