Mental disorders are the second leading cause of disease burden among Australia's Indigenous people after cardiovascular disease. Yet Indigenous people do not access mental health services in proportion to their need. This paper explores the barriers and facilitators for Indigenous people seeking mental health services in Australia and identifies key elements in the development and maintenance of partnerships for improved service delivery and future research. The process of seeking help for mental illness has been conceptualized as four consecutive steps starting from recognizing that there is a problem to actually contacting the mental health service. We have attempted to explore the factors affecting each of these stages. While people in the general population experience barriers across all four stages of the process of seeking treatment for a mental disorder, there are many more barriers for Indigenous people at the stage of actually contacting a mental health service. These include a history of racism and discrimination and resultant lack of trust in mainstream services, misunderstandings due to cultural and language differences, and inadequate measures to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness. Further research is required to understand the mental health literacy of Indigenous people, their different perceptions of mental health and well-being, issues around stigma, and the natural history of mental illness among Indigenous people who do not access any form of professional help. Collaborations between mainstream mental health services and Aboriginal organizations have been promoted as a way to conduct research into developing appropriate services for Indigenous people.

These findings suggest that there is a need for programmes that aim to improve mental health literacy and promote help seeking among Aboriginal men who are mentally unwell. Such programmes need to be developed jointly by mental health services as well as Aboriginal stakeholders, and implemented in a culturally sensitive and acceptable way.

This paper describes the perceptions of Aboriginal stakeholders as well as mental health personnel on improving Aboriginal men's access to mental health services. From January 2009 to June 2010, 23 semi-structured interviews and three focus groups were conducted with 17 Aboriginal stakeholders and 29 mental health staff from a regional mental health service in Victoria. A qualitative description design was adopted and data were analysed thematically. Seven themes emerged from the data. Three themes focused on the mismatch between mainstream mental health service provision and the mental health needs of Aboriginal men. They include barriers to gaining entry into services, barriers to engagement with services, and staffing problems in the services. The remaining four themes related to possible solutions to improving men's access to services and included building men's confidence in services, developing relationships with the Aboriginal Community, enhancing flexibility of services, and strengthening the role of the Koori Mental Health Liaison Officer. The dual perspectives of Aboriginal stakeholders and service providers provide a more comprehensive picture of the ground realities concerning Aboriginal men's access to mental health services. The findings have implications for the provision of culturally sensitive mental health services for Aboriginal men.

Evidence on the methods followed by non-Indigenous researchers for conducting research that involves Indigenous people in Australia is sparse. This paper describes the methodology and steps followed by a non-Indigenous researcher for engaging with men from an Aboriginal community in rural Victoria in conducting mental health services research. It describes the process adopted to initiate research and build research capacity within an Indigenous community where Indigenous researchers were unavailable and the local communities were ill-equipped to conduct research themselves. The methodology followed was informed by the values and ethics guidelines of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, the decolonising methodology of Linda Tuhiwai Smith as well as methods suggested by other authors. Lessons learnt included providing for a long time frame, which is necessary to develop relationships and trust with individuals and their Communities, 1 adopting a flexible approach and engaging cultural advisers who represent different sections of the Community.