MentalhealthandAboriginalpeopleandcommunities.docVIP

Mental health and Aboriginal people and communities 10-year mental health plan technical paper Contents Background 1 Aboriginal communities and the experience of poor mental health 2 Policy and program options 3 Improve access to culturally responsive mainstream clinical treatment and support services 3 Improve mental health of Aboriginal prisoners 4 Improve access to stable, appropriate and affordable housing 4 Questions for consultation 4 References 5 Background Victoria’s Aboriginal population is estimated to be 47,333 people, and forms 0.86 per cent of the total Victorian population. The Aboriginal Victorian population is young. Just under half (47 per cent) are under 19 years of age (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011). The Aboriginal Victorian population is growing, and growing much faster than the non-Aboriginal population. Just over half of Victoria’s Aboriginal population lives in rural and regional areas (53 per cent) (cited in VicHealth 2011). Victoria’s first peoples draw on shared culture that extends tens of thousands of years in the past, and continues to be practiced now. This culture sees health as not simply the physical wellbeing of an individual, but the social, emotional and cultural wellbeing of the whole community. Victoria’s first peoples also share a more recent history of colonisation, dispossession and cultural dislocation and separation from family and community through removal and denial of political power. Within living memory, Aboriginal Victorians were forcibly removed from their families under Stolen Generation policies, with 47 per cent of Aboriginal Victorians having a relative that was removed under these policies. In itself this represents trauma that is experienced across generations. This transgenerational trauma is a compounded by increased rates of incarceration and child protection intervention, which replicate institutionalised family separation. The history of Aboriginal Victorians is also a history of resistance,