Reflection on the First People’s Mental Health Risk Factors

This article discusses the risk factors contributing to high health inequalities among First People in Australia. It explores the impact of stolen generation, dispossession, racism, education, and loss of connection to country on mental health. The article also highlights the role of cultural and historical trauma in the development of mental health disorders among the First People. The subject matter is relevant to courses in Indigenous studies, social work, and public health. The article is available on Desklib, an online library for study material with solved assignments, essays, and dissertations.

Running Head: REFLECTION ON THE FIRST PEOPLE’S MENTAL HEALTH
Reflection on the First People’s Mental Health Risk Factors
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REFLECTION ON THE FIRST PEOPLE’S MENTAL HEALTH 2
Part 1: Concept Map
Introduction
Aborigines are the indigenous people of Australia. Their presence dates back to around
40,000 years, long before the Europeans arrived and settled on the island continent at the end of
the 18th century. From there, nothing will ever be like before for the country and its inhabitants,
humans as animals. Europeans gradually bring in species from the old continent, convicts, and
gradually decimate the Aboriginal population. Illness, extermination, nothing will save them
until the twentieth century. Today, the aboriginal issue is not settled and is a major problem that
divides the country in two. As depicted in the concept map below, there are five major concepts
that can be used to explain why there is high health inequalities among First People. These
concepts include the stolen generation, education, dispossession, racism and loss of connection
to country. Each of these concepts contributes in one way or another to the high health
inequalities among the First people in Australia.

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Stolen generation
Education
Dispossession
Racism
Loss of connection to country
Health inequalities
among First Pople

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Part 2
This part will demonstrate how the concepts identified in the concept map play a role in
increasing the incidence and prevalence of mental health problems among Aboriginal people in
Australia.
Stolen generation
Stolen generation is one of the factors responsible for high health inequalities among the
First People. Legal, archival and protocol documents show that the separation of children from
the family and their placement in boarding schools led to the destruction of family and social
ties. Many pupils did not know parental care, did not adopt the traditional family experience, did
not acquire life and parental skills, they did not have self-esteem and respect for elders. Their
parents, in turn, did not have the opportunity to take care of their children, educate and instruct
them, teach them to make the right decisions (De Leo, Milner & Sveticic, 2012). Over time, the
boarding system weakened the emotional connection between parents and children. Being in
isolation from their native culture and spiritual values, the children lost their family ties. This
loss has disrupted the transfer of traditional experience and knowledge to succeeding
generations. Stolen generation significantly hinder the ability of the First People to assimilate
and learn more about the health care services. It causes a cultural trauma. It affected the way the
First People perceive the external world. Children living apart from their families were deprived
of parental care and attention taken in their native traditional culture. As a result, they did not
develop the skills of education and care for their own children. To date, there are four
generations (Soole, Kolves & De Leo, 2014). Indigenous peoples with destructive experiences
in boarding schools, which they passed on to their own children and grandchildren, as well as to
other persons who are not their descendants, through the indirect impact of trauma on the entire

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community. Successive governments - sometimes purposefully, and sometimes, ignorant of the
consequences - sought to assimilate the aborigines into their society, destroying their traditional
way of life, culture and language, imposing them an alien way of life and religion (Elias,
Mignone & Hall et al. 2012). For many centuries, indigenous peoples in the colonial countries
have experienced numerous humiliations, violence, hunger, and sometimes - mass destruction
and extermination. The consequences of the transferred historical losses are still preserved in the
form of unfavorable socio-economic status, intolerance and discrimination, erosion of traditional
culture. The clinical consequences of cultural and historical trauma are manifested by high
levels of suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, abuse of surfactants and a number of other
disorders. Currently, these disorders are classified as "complicated grief", or "complicated grief".
The grief of indigenous peoples is a common experience that has developed among all members
of the community due to colonization and forced assimilation. "Complicated grief," in this
context, is the suffering of entire populations, which is transmitted to subsequent generations and
clinically manifested in high death rates from unnatural causes (Sveticic, Milner & De Leo
2012). Surveys conducted in 2005 among the adult population of reservations revealed a high
prevalence of thoughts about loss (Derek Cheung, Spittal, Williamson et al. 2014). Almost a fifth
(18.2%) of the indigenous people daily or several times a day thought about the loss of land.
More than one third (36.3%) daily or several times a day thought about the loss of their native
language. One third (33.4%) daily or several times a day thought about the loss of traditional
spirituality. This number increased by more than half (54.8%), when they considered those who
had such thoughts, at least every week. One third (33.7%) thought daily of the loss of traditional
culture; half (48.1%) thought about this at least once a week. Almost everyone was worried
about alcoholism, only 7.5% said that they "never" thought about it. Thoughts about loss of

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respect for elders were daily worried by 37.5% of respondents, 65% thought about it every week.
33.2% of the respondents visited daily thoughts of premature departure from the life of
community members, 54.5% thought about it every week (Soole, Kolves & De Leo 2014).
Dispossession
Dispossession is another concept that is responsible for high health inequalities among
the First People in Australia. The first people were deprived of their land, property and culture.
This significantly destabilizes the way they manage their day to day activities. Before
dispossession, the First People had strong culture (Austin, van den Heuvel & Byard 2011). Due
to the strong protective factors that were present in the traditional culture of indigenous
populations and included a collective way of life, proper nutrition, a clear division of social roles,
a traditional system of upbringing. Strong family ties, collectivism and cohesion provided care
and attention to the younger generation from close relatives and other members of the
community, which led to the formation of a sense of security and self-sufficiency in children
(Pridmore & Fujiyama 2009). In addition, the cultural rites, which were present in many tribes,
allowed the aborigines to react to negative emotions. In some traditional cultures, the forms of
behavior of members of the community in performing certain rituals were associated with self-
harm, in particular, in Australian tribes, during mourning rituals, women were haircut (Farrelly
& Francis 2009). However, suicides were not a characteristic phenomenon for traditional
cultures (Parker, 2010).
Dispossession resulted in the destruction of the traditional way of life, resettlement on the
reservation, the emergence of new diseases, unknown earlier, led to high mortality of the
indigenous population, marginalization and poverty, caused psychological stress and despair.

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Continuing discrimination, a lot of stressful factors, low socio-economic status, create
prerequisites for deteriorating mental health and suicidal behavior.
Loss of connection to country
Loss of connection to country is another great impediment faced by the First People in
Australia. When studying the place of residence of indigenous Australians, Phillips (2009) found
that about a quarter of the aboriginal population lives in remote parts of the continent. From 26%
to 62% of indigenous Australians over 15 live in very cramped conditions, in crowded housing
(Phillips 2009). Most children can not attend school due to their inability to stay in school: only
39.5% of indigenous children are kept in secondary school, compared to 76.6% of non-
Aboriginal children. Australian Aborigines are 12 times more likely to go to jail, compared to the
rest of the Australian population.
Members of indigenous communities living in remote areas have far fewer opportunities
to receive medical care, including mental health services (Adams , Halacas, Cincotta et al.
2014). As a result, they have low rates of physical and mental health, high rates of premature
mortality from external causes, including suicide. Most of the aboriginal Australians who
committed suicide did not have the opportunity to seek medical help.
Education
There are very few schools available for them. Some are in the hands of missionaries who
try to instill in their children Christian doctrines and enmity toward the old customs. Training is
often only in local dialects, for some missionaries deliberately do not teach Aboriginal children
English to weaken their contact with the rest of the population. On the contrary, in government
schools, instruction is usually conducted on English programs and textbooks that are not adapted

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to local conditions and to the terms of children . Lack of adequate education significantly
affected the way First People utilizes health care services (Chartier, Vaeth & Caetano 2013).
Low education level can hinder utilization and access to health care leading to health
inequalities. Education also determine the standard of living. The standard of living of aborigines
is significantly inferior to that of other Australians. Because of the lack of satisfactory education,
and also because of the racial prejudices that still prevail in the country, the majority of working
Aborigines (both in cities and in rural areas) are forced to be content with unskilled and
underpaid work. The average annual income of a family from Aborigines is half that of the rest
of Australians: 6,000 and 12,000 respectively (Street, Baum, Anderson, Cooperative Research
Centre for Aboriginal Health (Australia), Flinders University., & Australia 2008).
Unemployment among aborigines is 24.6%, while among the remaining Australians it is 5.9%.
Settlements of aborigines in those settlements and cities where "white" predominate, are located
separately, as a rule on the outskirts, in the most inconvenient places (Street, Baum, Anderson,
Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health (Australia), Flinders University., & Australia
2008). Unsanitary living conditions, insufficient and improper diet, sedentary lifestyle, to which
they are completely unadapted, the lack of immunity to many common diseases among
Europeans lead to the fact that the aborigines are often seriously ill. Children's mortality in
Aborigines is almost 3 times higher than in "white" Australians, and the average life expectancy
is 20 years less.
Racism
The indigenous population is deprived of elementary democratic rights and rights to
human existence. The aborigine is not allowed to travel in his own country, he has no right even
to move from one reservation to another without special written permission, otherwise he will be

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arrested. But they can send him without any trial to any reservation and stay there for as long as
the Director of the Aboriginal Affairs Department will appoint (Calabria, Doran, Vos et al.
2010).
All bona fide observers note the plight of the aborigines in modern Australia.
"Philanthropists guard them as an endangered race," wrote the researcher Pfeffer. "Science
studies them as animals in a zoological garden." For actions that they do not criminalize, they are
brought to court, which they do not understand. Missionaries destroy their faith, traders deceive
them. Gold miners and shepherds take away their women, their watch over how foolish children
or exploit (Eckermann, 2010).
In addition to civil unequal rights, Aboriginal people, like the mestizo, suffer from
domestic racial discrimination. Among the majority of the population of Australia, racial
prejudices are common. Aborigines often display a disdainful attitude. So, regardless of their
age, they are only called diminutive names "Tommy", "Jackie" and so on. In the course of the
colloquial-abbreviated word "abo" (aborigine). Racism also resulted in poor policies designed to
help the First people (Street, Baum, Anderson, Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal
Health (Australia), Flinders University., & Australia 2008).

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