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Speaking frankly...Healing isn't about fixing what's broken, it's about restoring connections and sharing responsibility...Yesterday, Mental Health Australia staff took part in a traditional ‘healing circle’, a NAIDOC Week event exploring Aboriginal cultural beliefs around healing or ‘recovery’ and its links to country and community. Aunty Matilda spoke about how, in her own culture, the emphasis is not on the illness, problem or dysfunctional behaviour that needs to be fixed. Instead, there is this idea of a pathway that a person follows over the journey of their lifetime. Staying on this pathway delivers a sense of meaning and achievement, and an ever-developing sense of purpose and identity. ‘Healing’, in the Aboriginal sense of the word, is required when a person strays from this pathway. In Indigenous cultures, it is the shared responsibility of those who take part in the healing circle – community members, family, friends and Elders – to ensure that a person finds their way back to their pathway and stays the course. The idea that communities bear responsibility to solve one another’s problems and assist each other’s healing is a powerful one. We have much to learn from this traditional wisdom that has enabled Indigenous cultures to survive and thrive in Australia, without many of the social ills that afflict their communities today, for thousands of years prior to colonisation. In March last year, during a visit to the Ngalkanbuy Clinic on Elcho Island, I was fortunate enough to accompany a local mental health worker on her morning rounds to visit clients and other local community health facilities. As she shared her views with me, it couldn’t have been clearer that so much of what we impose on our Indigenous communities, with the very best of intentions, often makes no sense and serves to perpetuate systemic oppression. After decades of lamenting social, political and health inequalities between white Australians and our First Nations’ Peoples, only in recent years have we begun to understand the value of traditional knowledge and healing practices to overall health and wellbeing. In mental health, Indigenous concepts of wellbeing, illness and healing can teach us a lot. Learnings about our interrelationships with other people, our communities, our past experiences, and our environment can help us to develop systems and strategies to better support the needs of all Australians – regardless of ethnic, linguistic or cultural background – who experience mental health issues. That is why it is so important to embrace events like NAIDOC Week and to make the most of opportunities that expose us to views and concepts usually viewed through a more mainstream cultural lens. This is so important if we are to solve the riddle of how to tackle mental illness and adequately support people across the cultural divide. We know that Indigenous adults are 4 to 7 times more likely to experience mental health issues than non-Indigenous Australians. We know that Indigenous adults are still 7 times more likely to experience substance abuse disorders, and that risk of suicide among Indigenous Australians is 6 times greater than for non-Indigenous Australians. NAIDOC Week reminds us of the importance of sharing wisdom and knowledge across cultures, of learning from the past, and of connecting and celebrating the cultural diversity that exists in Australia. This year’s theme 'Because of her we can' is also an opportunity to celebrate the contributions that Indigenous women have made and continue to make to our understanding and awareness of contemporary Indigenous issues. First Nations women were the carriers of the dreaming stories, songs, languages and knowledge that kept their culture strong for 65 thousand years prior to colonisation. And although Indigenous women continue to play active and significant roles at all levels of Australian society today - evidenced in one way by the impressively high rates of female representation on boards of Indigenous corporations - their roles are too often invisible, unsung or diminished. The reminder of the strength, contribution and resilience of First Nations women is aptly timed to join the growing chorus of voices calling on men to do more to grow a culture of respect around women and girls on the back of the #MeToo movement. And it is aptly timed to rally all of us in mental health to seek out and embrace Indigenous ideas of healing to enrich our knowledge base, improve our practice approaches, and develop the kinds of relationships and services that will be taken up and deliver outcomes in Indigenous communities. But the most important thing we can take away from traditional Aboriginal healing practices and beliefs this NAIDOC Week, is a sense of community responsibility towards our First Nations’ Peoples for the wounds inflicted by past policies and events. And an understanding of the role that healing on a national level plays in closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous health outcomes. Warm regards.
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Mental Health Australia Member Profiles
NewsEndED Butterfly House, Australia’s first residential eating disorder treatment facility announced The Turnbull Government will provide $1.5 million for Australia’s first residential eating disorder treatment facility on the Sunshine Coast, helping hundreds of patients each year. The joint project led by Sunshine-Coast-based endED organisation and the Butterfly Foundation will establish endED Butterfly House. “This centre will provide specialist care to hundreds of people experiencing eating disorders, through in-patient and best practice treatment programs,” said Minister for Health Greg Hunt.
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Reminders Project Air Strategy Consumer & Carer DayThe theme for this year’s Consumer and Carer Day on 1 November 2018 will be ‘Recovery’ where stories from people with lived experience and family and carers will be shared. Attendees will also have the opportunity to hear about the latest research in the recovery field and have the opportunity to voice their views on issues central to the treatment of personality disorders. A number of small travel and registration bursaries are available those who would otherwise be unable to attend.
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