Aboriginal and Torres Islander Health

Running head: ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER HEALTH 1
Aboriginal and Torres Islander Health
Students Name
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ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER HEALTH 2
Difference between an Aboriginal Concept of Social and Emotional well-being as opposed
to the term mental health
The Aboriginal Concept of Social and Emotional Wellbeing is that it describes the
cultural, social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of an individual. The Aboriginal concept
acknowledges that connection to culture, spirituality, land, community and family are essential to
individuals and can have an effect on their wellbeing. The term also recognises the fact that an
individual's social and emotional wellbeing is affected by both past events and policies (Social
and Emotional Wellbeing - Health Topics, n.d.). Mental health has been used a lot to explain
how people feel and think and how they take part in and cope in their everyday life. This is
different from the Aboriginal and Torres Islander people whose concept of mental illness and
mental health is that it focuses on too many problems that an individual has instead of describing
all the factors that influence and make up the wellbeing of a person (Australia's First People -
Their Social and Emotional Well-being | UN Chronicle, n.d.).
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands view of mental health is that it comes from a
clinical or illness perspective and focuses most on an individual than how they live and interact
in their environment. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people use the term social and
emotional wellbeing as it covers all the aspects of health comprehensively. Therefore, this means
that they think of mental health as a component of a person’s social and emotional wellbeing
(Australia's First People - Their Social and Emotional Well-being | UN Chronicle, n.d.).

ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER HEALTH 3
The Aboriginal and Torres Islander people believe that experiences that may affect their
wellbeing include social exclusion, sexual and physical abuse, stress, physical and emotional
neglect, trauma and grief, substance abuse, racism, discrimination, domestic violence and social
disconnection. The social wellbeing of the Aboriginal and Torres Islander people is influenced
by the connections to culture, land, community, mind and emotions, body, family and
spirituality. They believe that once these connections have been disrupted, one may have poor
social and emotional wellbeing. The Aboriginal and Torres Islander people think that because
those connections were disrupted before through previous government policies, they are more
prone to having a poor social and emotional wellbeing (Measuring the social and emotional
wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Table of contents, n.d.).
The connection to family members and the community refer to the aboriginal components
of wellbeing that are based in interpersonal interactions. This type of connection has always been
key to the functioning of the contemporary and traditional Aboriginal and Torres Islander people.
The connection to body entails physical wellbeing as well as the biological markers that explain
the physical wellbeing of a person. The connection to mind and emotions involves both an
individual’s experience of wellbeing and the emotional, psychological and emotional human
experience. The connection to spirituality refers to the experiences and beliefs that have a strong
connection with spirituality. Spirituality is also strongly tied to the connection to the land. The
connection to culture refers to the opportunity and capacity to maintain a healthy and robust
relationship to the Aboriginal and Torres Islander culture (Odd & Frommer, 2015).