$100 million for "Psycho-Astrology"

"The latest effort to 'indigenise' knowledge is the bestowing of a huge pot of money on Māori organisations to use 'ancestral knowledge' to help cure mental health issues among the indigenous people. This is described in the Newshub article ... which you can click to read.
    "The article notes that 'The new Māori Health Authority has a budget of half a billion dollars and CEO Riana Manuel has allocated $100 million of that to support centuries-old treatments.'
    "And there is a need for treatment, for the article also notes this: 'Māori have the highest suicide rates of all ethnic groups in New Zealand....' But ... 100 million dollars for using 'centuries-old treatments' is a lot of money.
    "What are these treatments? It’s not clear, but they’re based on lunar cycles and what can only be called psychoastrology.... practices ... adopted in the absence of clinical trials, and so there is only a “traditional” basis for the therapy. Might Māori be helped more with other practices, like cognitive behavioral therapy, practices that have been tested and shown to be efficacious? Or even medication, which has a significant effect on things like depression. (A combination of talk and drug therapy seems to be the most curative).
    "As a colleague wrote me, this absence of scientific testing of a method that will absorb $100 million is the same issue raised with Matauranga Māori: what is claimed (or assumed) to be 'scientific' has not been vetted using the scientific method....
    "Mental health is a form of health, and this is like treating diseases using astrology and 'traditional methods' that have never been subject to genuine scientific tests. Doesn’t it seem wise, before investing $100 million in mental-health treatment, that the government of New Zealand be sure that those treatments actually work?
    "Sadly, that’s not the way the New Zealand government rolls."

~ American evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, from his post 'Indigenous psychiatry: how valuable is it?'