Social and Emotional Well-being in Australia

Social & Emotional
Well-Being
Indigenous Community, Australia
SystemJP
12/17/2019

Social and Emotional Well-being in Australia
Introduction
Aim of this paper is to deliver detailed information and review critical analysis of Social and
Emotional Well-Being (SEWB) concept popular among the Aboriginal peoples and the
difference between terms of mental health. This paper will analyse different literature reviews
and journal articles defining the detailed analysis of different perspective related to mental
health issues and well-being for Aboriginal peoples in their thinking, this study will find
difference between the definitions and acceptance of mental health among western nation and
Aboriginals peoples (Bourke, Humphreys, Wakerman & Taylor, 2012). Australian
indigenous communities are assumed to suffer most from the health issues and find
difficulties in access the healthcare services due to their beliefs and culture practice, this
paper will discuss the following statements;
· Finding differences between an Aboriginal concept of social and emotional
wellbeing (SEWB) as opposed to the term mental health
Term Social and Emotional Wellbeing is deeply related to the describing spiritual, cultural
and social wellness and maintenance in the views of the Aboriginal peoples, these people
identify health and wellbeing related to the land, religion, family and traditional beliefs of
their community and they never adopt the mental illness as the health issue because their
traditional values are fully based in the concept of the emotional attachment with the issues
faced by one in the community (Day & Francisco, 2013). Indigenous community describe
mental health is related to the emotions and feelings of a person in his emotional attachment
and they think that settled standard of mental health by the government did not include and
cover all the factors related to thinking and feeling of the community. Aboriginal believe that
mental health related to the normal stress and challenges faced by the people in their living,
they believe that discrimination faced by the community in their past and critical time they
faced at the time of British colonisation had a great impact over the emotions and mental

Social and Emotional Well-being in Australia
states of their life hence they assume and accept mental health is the result of the depression
they faced in losing their traditional identity and land control in the past (Dudgeon, Milroy,
Walker, Calma & Green, n.d.).
Professor Helen in their detailed study identified that aboriginals have a different point of
view about social and emotional wellbeing; they recorded their findings in three forms as the
denial of existence, denial of identity and denial of existence (Geia, Power & West, 2013).
Major social determiners of better health in the society is related to better access on basic
amenities including better and healthy food, access to proper education and majorly include
the regular employment and earnings for healthy living, facing discrimination from many
decades aboriginals accept that inability to access the basic requirement affect the mental
state and thinking ability of a person (Harfield et al., 2018). Western guidelines are still
challenging to accept by the aboriginals as they think these are not covering the entire area of
the mental health by the aboriginals, these guidelines need to cover the following detailed list
of concept related to the social and emotional wellbeing of community;
1. Health as full focused criteria
2. Self-determination right
3. Understanding about the tradition and culture
4. Identification of human-rights
5. Evolution of the historical impact over the community
6. Impact of racial discrimination
7. Identification of centrality position
8. Evaluation and identification of cultural diversity and importance
9. Evaluation and identification of aboriginal qualities and strengths
Health and wellbeing is a challenging concept in relation of aboriginals and Torres Islander
community because health care professional are accepted to understand the detailed