Te Ui Ariki Ngateitei o te Kuki Airani

How Cook Islands travellers with mental health issues can prepare for their journey and get help when abroad

If you are experiencing difficulties with mental health issues abroad, your nearest Cook Island Embassy may be able to offer assistance. This guide explains how you can stay safe abroad and what help we can offer if you find yourself in difficulty.

How you can help yourself

If you take prescribed medication, make sure you have a sufficient supply.

In some countries, your prescription medication might be banned, unavailable or available under a different name.

Get foreign travel insurance

Travel insurance may cover costs of local medical treatment and possibly repatriation. However, it often does not cover pre-existing conditions, especially previous mental health diagnoses, and may exclude conditions related to drug/alcohol abuse. See our travel insurance advice for further advice.

How we can help Cook Island travellers with mental health issues

A Cook Islands Embassy can:

  • listen to you and help you look at your options
  • help you contact friends and family members if you want to
  • visit you in hospital or prison in line with our usual procedures
  • raise any concerns about your treatment or welfare with the responsible authority (such as a prison or hospital)
  • help overseas medical staff contact medical staff in the Cook Islands who may be able to provide advice on your medical history
  • give information about local medication suppliers
  • be available, as appropriate, to offer you assistance if you choose to remain overseas
  • liaise with your travel rep or travel insurance company, if required

What services we can't provide

A Cook Island Embassy cannot:

  • give advice on mental health issues
  • buy or supply medication
  • withhold or remove a passport
  • stop you from travelling abroad
  • require you to return to the Cook Islands
  • pay for you to return to the Cook Islands
  • pay for food, accommodation or medical bills
  • get you better treatment in hospital or prison than is given to local people

You should bear in mind that medical treatment is rarely free overseas and in many countries is very expensive. Cook Island Embassies cannot pay medical bills for you.

What are mental health issues?

Mental health problems range from the worries we all experience as part of everyday life to serious long-term conditions. The majority of people who experience mental health problems can get over them or learn to live with them, especially if they get help early on.

Mental health problems are usually defined and classified to enable professionals to refer people for appropriate care and treatment. But some diagnoses are controversial and there is much concern in the mental health field that people are too often treated according to or described by their label. This can have a profound effect on their quality of life. Nevertheless, diagnoses remain the most usual way of dividing and classifying symptoms into groups.

Most mental health symptoms have traditionally been divided into groups called either 'neurotic' or 'psychotic' symptoms. 'Neurotic' covers those symptoms which can be regarded as severe forms of 'normal' emotional experiences such as depression, anxiety or panic. Conditions formerly referred to as 'neuroses' are now more frequently called 'common mental health problems.'

Less common are 'psychotic' symptoms, which interfere with a person's perception of reality, and may include hallucinations such as seeing, hearing, smelling or feeling things that no one else can.

Mental health problems affect the way you think, feel and behave. They are problems that can be diagnosed by a doctor, not personal weaknesses.

Mental health problems are very common. About a quarter of the population experience some kind of mental health problem in any one year.

Anxiety and depression are the most common problems, with around 1 in 10 people affected at any one time. Anxiety and depression can be severe and long-lasting and have a big impact on people's ability to get on with life.

Between one and two in every 100 people experience a severe mental illness, such as bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia, and have periods when they lose touch with reality. People affected may hear voices, see things no one else sees, hold unusual or irrational beliefs, feel unrealistically powerful, or read particular meanings into everyday events.

Although certain symptoms are common in specific mental health problems, no two people behave in exactly the same way when they are unwell.

Many people who live with a mental health problem or are developing one try to keep their feelings hidden because they are afraid of other people's reactions. And many people feel troubled without having a diagnosed, or diagnosable, mental health problem - although that doesn't mean they aren't struggling to cope with daily life.


Specific travel advice