Pat Dudgeon

Facilitating empowerment and self-determination through participatory action research: findings from the National Empowerment Project

The National Empowerment Project (NEP) is an innovative Aboriginal-led community-based project. Since 2012, it has been working with communities in 11 sites across Australia to develop a culturally appropriate health promotion and primary prevention intervention strategy to reduce the high rates of psychological distress and suicide among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The NEP is built around the use of localized participatory action research (PAR) processes to support communities to identify key factors negatively impacting on their lives as well as strategies for promoting well-being and building resilience. This article details the application of the PAR approach by the NEP Aboriginal community-based researchers. It provides some unique insights into how PAR facilitated communities to have a voice and the ways in which it supported important change processes at both an individual and a community level.

@Indigenousx: A Case Study of Community-Led Innovation in Digital Media:

The ever-increasing uses for social media and mobile technologies are bringing new opportunities for innovation and participation across societies, while challenging and disrupting the status quo. Characteristics of the digital age include the proliferation of user-driven innovation and the blurring of boundaries and roles, whether between the producers and users of news and other products or services, or between sectors. The @IndigenousX Twitter account, which has a different Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person tweeting each week, is an example of user-driven innovation and of how Indigenous voices are emerging strongly in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Its founder, Luke Pearson, a teacher and Aboriginal education consultant, wanted to share the platform he had established on Twitter for storytelling to an engaged audience. The account can thus be seen as a form of citizen, participatory, community or alternative journalism. This article provides a preliminary analysis of @IndigenousX, and suggests that this account and the diversity of Indigenous voices in the digital environment offer opportunities for wide-ranging research endeavours. Initiatives like @IndigenousX are also a reminder that journalism has much to learn from innovation outside the conventional realm of journalistic practice.

Using participatory action research to prevent suicide in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities

The National Empowerment Project is an innovative Aboriginal-led community empowerment project that has worked with eight Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia over the period 2012-13. The aim of the Project was to develop, deliver and evaluate a program to: (1) promote positive social and emotional well-being to increase resilience and reduce the high reported rates of psychological distress and suicide among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; and (2) empower communities to take action to address the social determinants that contribute to psychological distress, suicide and self-harm. Using a participatory action research approach, the communities were supported to identify the risk factors challenging individuals, families and communities, as well as strategies to strengthen protective factors against these challenges. Data gathered during Stage 1 were used to develop a 12-month program to promote social and emotional well-being and build resilience within each community. A common framework, based on the social and emotional well-being concept, was used to support each community to target community-identified protective factors and strategies to strengthen individual, family and community social and emotional well-being. Strengthening the role of culture is critical to this approach and marks an important difference between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous mental health promotion and prevention activities, including suicide prevention. It has significant implications for policy makers and service providers and is showing positive impact through the translation of research into practice, for example through the development of a locally run empowerment program that aims to address the social determinants of health and their ongoing negative impact on individuals, families and communities. It also provides a framework in which to develop and strengthen culture, connectedness and foster self-determination, through better-informed policy based on community-level holistic responses and solutions as opposed to an exclusive focus on single-issue deficit approaches.

The Gayaa Dhuwi (Proud Spirit) Declaration – a Call to Action for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership in the Australian mental health system

ABSTRACT The Gayaa Dhuwi (Proud Spirit) Declaration aims to improve the mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples by supporting their leadership in those parts of the mental health system that work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations. A further aim is to promote an appropriate balance of clinical and culturally-informed mental health system responses, including by providing access to cultural healing, to mental health problems in Aboriginal and Torres Strait persons. Developed by the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Leadership in Mental Health (NATSILMH) as a companion document to the international Wharerātā Declaration, the Gayaa Dhuwi (Proud Spirit) Declaration also sets out principles for governments, professional bodies and other stakeholders to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership in the Australian mental health system; and principles for working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health leaders as they exercise culturally informed leadership within the Australian mental health system. The Gayaa Dhuwi (Proud Spirit) Declaration is being promoted by NATSILMH as a new paradigm for shaping mental health system responses to Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander mental health problems.

#IHMayDay: tweeting for empowerment and social and emotional wellbeing.

Objective: This paper examines the themes of #IHMayDay, a day-long Twitter discussion about Indigenous health led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on 1 May 2014. Method: The Symplur analytics tool was used to identify the Twitter activity associated with #IHMayDay. This paper reviews the content of 423 tweets that were tweeted and retweeted by 346 individuals and 108 organisations. Results: Issues related to social and emotional wellbeing were dominant, and the analysis highlights the empowering nature of the strengths-based discourse. Conclusions: Twitter-based events such as #IHMayDay and initiatives such as the rotated, curated account @IndigenousX are powerful platforms for learning, exchange, advocacy and dialogue about the social and emotional wellbeing and mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Decolonising Psychology: Validating Social and Emotional Wellbeing

Objective Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) is a multifaceted concept that acknowledges that a persons wellbeing is determined by a range of inter‐related domains: body, mind and emotions, family and kinship, community, culture, Country, and spirituality. This paper explores the meaning of these seven domains of SEWB. Method A thematic analysis of qualitative data obtained from the National Empowerment Project (NEP) was conducted, along with a literature review of each domain. Results Findings from the NEP, together with relevant literature, indicate that implementing strategies that focus on strengthening SEWB is important for individual, family, and community wellbeing. Addressing the social determinants of Indigenous disadvantage is also shown to have an important role in strengthening the SEWB of individuals, families, and communities. Conclusion It is important for all practitioners and policymakers involved with improving Indigenous health to recognise the seven inter‐related domains of SEWB and to acknowledge and support people in addressing the social determinants of wellbeing.

Recent developments in suicide prevention among the Indigenous peoples of Australia

Objectives: Suicide is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter ‘Indigenous’) population health issue. Over 2015–2016, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Project (ATSISPEP) aimed to identify success factors in Indigenous suicide prevention. Conclusions: For non-Indigenous practitioners working with indigenous clients at risk of suicide, ATSISPEP identified important considerations to make treatment more effective. The start is acknowledging the differences in the historical, cultural, political, social and economic experiences of Indigenous peoples, and their greater exposure to trauma, psychological distress and risks to mental health. These mental health difficulties are specific and more prevalent amongst Indigenous peoples and communities due to the ongoing impacts of colonisation in Australia including a range of social determinants impacting on the well-being of Indigenous peoples today. Working effectively with Indigenous clients also includes being able to establish culturally safe work environments, and the ability of non-Indigenous practitioners to work in a culturally competent and trauma-informed manner. There are also considerations regarding time protocols and client follow-up. Further, postvention responses might be required. Supporting selective suicide prevention activity among younger people (and other groups at increased risk) and community-level work is an important complement to working with Indigenous individuals at risk of suicide.

The Australian Psychological Society's Apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People

The gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non‐Indigenous health, education, mental health, and social and emotional wellbeing remains a major concern. Bridging these gaps and working in culturally safe and responsive ways with people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent presents considerable challenges, including for the discipline and profession of psychology. At the Australian Psychological Societys (APS) inaugural congress in September 2016, the APS issued an Apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The apology was a formal acknowledgment of the role of the discipline and profession of psychology in failing to listen and show respect to Indigenous Australians. The apology was also a commitment to change. This paper provides the background and context to, and motivation for, the apology. The APS received highly positive reactions to the apology across Australia and internationally. However, further change and work needs to be undertaken as the challenge for the discipline and profession now is to demonstrate a commitment to the apology by supporting and engaging in culturally safe practices.

Indigenous peoples and human rights: some considerations for the occupational therapy profession in Australia.

Indigenous peoples and human rights: Some considerations for the occupational therapy profession in Australia Chontel Gibson, Corrine Butler, Christopher Henaway, Pat Dudgeon and Michael Curtin School of Community Health, Charles Sturt University, Orange, New South Wales, Adult Allied Health Team, Office of Disability, NT Government, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, QLD Aboriginal & Islander Health Council, Brisbane, Queensland, School of Indigenous Studies, The University of Western Australia (M303), Crawley, Western Australia, and School of Community Health, Charles Sturt University, Albury, New South Wales, Australia

Indigenous Healing Practices in Australia

ABSTRACT Indigenous Australian women are among the most disadvantaged women in the world. Over two centuries of colonization have had a damaging impact on perceptions of their gender roles and status as well as many other consequential oppressions. These experiences have affected the social and emotional wellbeing of Indigenous women of all ages, resulting in socio-economic ghettoization, higher suicide rates, psychological distress, illness, and poverty. Generations of women have experienced the forced removal of their children, resulting in complex forms of historical trauma. Despite this, Indigenous women have also maintained strong leadership roles and have kept families and communities intact. In the last few decades, the Australian Indigenous mental health movement has emerged within the context of a broader self-determination movement, restoring and strengthening women’s traditional therapeutic practices. This article offers an overview of the social and emotional wellbeing of Indigenous women within neocolonial Australia and explores women’s relationship to traditional therapeutic practices. Future directions and key issues for the capacity building of Indigenous women’s healing are explored.