Ross discusses mental health with psychiatrist in podcast
Independent Botany MP Jami-Lee Ross has involved his personal psychiatrist in a new podcast series about mental health.
In the podcast, Ross interviewed Dr Hugh Clarkson who offered his clinical assessment of Ross, saying he had an “adjustment disorder”.
“This is a reflection of the idea that there were pressures on you that you were reacting to, as opposed to having developed some sort of illness process out of the blue,” Clarkson said. “There were pressures you were under that were generated entirely from the outside and there were pressures generated inside and they interacted in complicated and rapidly changing ways.”
He said Ross was trying to respond to those issues and trying to make sense of the situation.
Ross resigned from the National Party last year after an independent investigation concluded it was most likely he who leaked the travel expenses of National Leader Simon Bridges to the media. Ross denies he was the leaker. He was admitted to the mental health unit at Middlemore Hospital at the end of October and discharged three days later. In the podcast, he said it was weeks after he left hospital before he went back to his electorate.
“I couldn’t even go to the supermarket in Botany because I felt the shame of everything that was being said about me,” he said.
The podcast is, in part, funded by the Parliamentary Service. Clarkson was not paid to be on it. The series is available on iTunes and Ross says he launched it to help others.
At Question Time yesterday, Ross asked Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern why New Zealanders were still waiting for the Government’s response to the inquiry into mental health and addiction.