Identity Challenges Among Aboriginal Youths

This presentation discusses the identity challenges faced by Aboriginal youths in Australia, including social discrimination, land ownership, and human rights. The presentation explores individual interventions, such as individual counseling and mental healthcare interventions, and cognitive-behaviorist theories to address these challenges. References are provided for further reading.

IDENTITY CHALLENGES AMONG ABORIGINAL
YOUTHS
Presented by-

WHO ARE ABORIGINALS? WHAT ARE IDENTITY CHALLENGES AMONG THE
ABORIGINALS?
■ Aboriginals are the indigenous people of Australia.
■ They are the people of the aboriginal race of Australia.
■ Aboriginals were considered as the devoid of culture
in any form, primitive and lacking material belonging.
■ Individual identity related close to one’s culture,
society, values and roles in society.
■ Individual fight for his/her identity with family and
society members.
■ Today, the indigenous people are faced with identity
challenges. Challenges such as identity crisis, social
discrimination, land ownership and human rights are
faced my the aboriginals.

INDIVIDUAL INTERVENTION
■ One of the vital part of social work practice is to
work with individuals on personal level.
■ The main focus for it is to help the individuals
help themselves for the issues they face in
society.
■ In this process a goal is set and social workers
with the method of individual intervention
achieve its objectives.

THE THEORY
■ Cognitive-behaviourist theories
■ In this case, the aboriginals are the group
of people faced with challenges in society.
The theory that explains the aboriginal’s
situation in the society is the cognitive-
behaviourist theorist.
■ The group has a set of learned behavior.
■ The situation of the aboriginals is due to
the reason that people after certain
repetitive negative events has made the
community feel the helplessness. This
helplessness is causing the major
challenges that the community face such
as suicide, low level of education and such
related problems.

THE INDIVIDUAL INTERVENTIONS
■ In social work, interventions refers to
the activities and actions that the social
workers take to provide service or
support to the needed people.
The type of individual interventions that
can be identified for the aboriginals are:
■ Individual counselling:
■ Training
■ Mental healthcare interventions
■ Abuse and neglect intervention
■ Family counselling (Wilson et al.
2015)

REFERENCES
■ Wexler, L., Jernigan, K., Mazzotti, J., Baldwin, E., Griffin, M., Joule, L., Garoutte Jr, J. and CIPA
Team, 2014. Lived challenges and getting through them: Alaska Native youth narratives as a way
to understand resilience. Health promotion practice, 15(1), pp.10-17.
■ Wilson, A. M., Magarey, A. M., Jones, M., O'Donnell, K., & Kelly, J. (2015). Attitudes and
characteristics of health professionals working in Aboriginal health. Rural & Remote
Health, 15(1).

Thank you