'building communities' capacity through empowerment, healing and leadership.'
NATIONAL EMPOWERMENT PROJECT
Building communities' capacity through empowerment and strengthening
cultural, social and emotional wellbeing.
MENTAL HEALTH FACTS AND SUICIDE PREVENTION
High rates of suicide among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are commonly attributed to a complex set of factors.
These include risk factors shared by the non-Indigenous population, social exclusion and disadvantage, and a broader set of social, economic and historic determinants that impact specifically on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural, social and emotional wellbeing and mental health.
Instead, communities have been left to manage the cumulative effects of colonisation and the contemporary determinants of health and wellbeing as best they can, for several generations.
Nationally, twice as many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience serious psychological distress (32%) compared to non-Indigenous Australians (17%) (ABS & AIHW, 2010).
Serious psychological distress among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples tends to be correlated with higher exposure to stressful life events, which accompany the social determinants.
Identifying the risk and protective factors that contribute to the cultural, social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and its opposite, community distress and suicide, requires an in-depth knowledge of the historic, cultural and economic risk factors at play in each community. These are best known and understood by community residents themselves.
Any discussion about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and mental health needs to have at the core not only a recognition of the impacts of colonisation, but the proper engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
For instance, in discussions about culture as a strategy to support strength, combat disadvantage and promote positive futures, the Office of the Arts states:
Culture is an important factor to consider in policies and programs to improve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Moreover, the strengthening of Indigenous culture is a strategy to reduce disadvantage in itself, holding enormous potential for contributing to Closing the Gap outcomes. Keeping culture strong is a necessary part of the solution to Indigenous disadvantage in Australia and to providing a positive future for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children (2013, p.1).
Stressful life events include death of family members, serious illness, accidents, incarceration of family members, and crowded housing.
It is likely therefore, that the deeper inequities faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the country have produced dangerously high levels of psychological distress.
When serious psychological distress exists among 30% of people in any community, it can easily spread and become ‘community distress’ (Kelly, Dudgeon, Gee & Glaskin, 2010). This risk is further heightened in remote and isolated communities, and amplified again by the interconnected nature of remote Aboriginal communities.
Being perennially identified as an ‘at-risk’ group within the broader mainstream population has resulted in the repeated delivery of selective or indicated strategies, where only small pockets of the most vulnerable receive short-term support.
Universal prevention strategies that promote strong, resilient communities and focus on restoring cultural, social and emotional wellbeing are needed. This needs to be done in such a way that each language group/nation and/or community is supported to achieve the goal of restoring cultural, social and emotional wellbeing at individual, family and community levels (Dudgeon et al., 2012).
Many key Reports propose that social and emotional wellbeing needs to be recognised as an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural concept and any program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should work from this paradigm.
In the provision of mental health services and programs, rather than simply adapting and delivering models designed for mainstream Australians, cultural, social and emotional wellbeing and mental health services or programs need to engage with the diversity of cultures and language groups and each group’s understanding of cultural, social and emotional wellbeing and how best to achieve it (Kelly et al., 2010; Dudgeon et al., 2012).
A comprehensive national or regional strategy to assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to restore their cultural, social and emotional wellbeing has yet to be implemented.
Evidence suggests that multiple short-term programs, which reach small numbers, will not achieve the critical balance required to restore cultural, social and emotional wellbeing across the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population.