Psychological Disorders Among the Australian Aboriginals

Eastwell, Harry D.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-9251-8_14

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…However, there are also some local factors that are important in the consideration of suicide in Aboriginal people in the Top End. In connection with the apparently higher risk of suicide for Aboriginal people in East Arnhem, commentators such as Eastwell [13] have noted a predisposition for Aboriginal people in this region to suffer from psychosis and with a higher prevalence of psychosis in these families generally. This may increase the risk of suicide in affected individuals.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A study of factors affecting suicide in Aboriginal and ‘other’ populations in the Top End of the Northern Territory through an audit of coronial records

Parker

Ben-Tovim

2002

Aust NZ J Psychiatry

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A study of factors affecting suicide in Aboriginal and ‘other’ populations in the Top End of the Northern Territory through an audit of coronial records

Parker

Ben-Tovim

2002

Aust NZ J Psychiatry

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“…Even as the mind had internal realms, these were permeable, social spaces and their products (visions, conversations, dreams, and sensations) were shared, discussed and corroborated socially (cf. Eastwell 1976). 51 Such orientations to the self, mind and body are part of social experience in this town and are the grounds of moral adjudication.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Queensland Aborigines, Multiple Realities and the Social Sources of Suffering: Psychiatry and Moral Regions of Being: Part 1

Cox

2009

Oceania

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This two part paper considers the experience of a range of magico-religious experiences (such as visions and voices) and spirit beliefs in a rural Aboriginal town. The papers challenge the tendency of institutionalised psychiatry to medicalise the experiences and critiques the way in which its individualistic practice is intensified in the face of an incomprehensible Aboriginal 'other' to become part of the power imbalance that characterises the relationship between Indigenous and white domains. The work reveals the internal differentiation and politics of the Aboriginal domain, as the meanings of these experiences and actions are contested and negotiated by the residents and in so doing they decentre the concerns of the white domain and attempt to control their relationship with it. Thus the plausibility structure that sustains these multiple realities reflects both accommodation and resistance to the material and historical conditions imposed and enacted by mainstream society on the residents, and to current socio-political realities. I conclude that the residents' narratives chart the grounds of moral adjudication as the experiences were rarely conceptualised by local people as signs of individual pathology but as reflections of social reality. Psychiatric drug therapy and the behaviourist assumptions underlying its practice posit atomised individuals as the appropriate site of intervention as against the multiple realities revealed by the phenomenology of the experiences. The papers thus call into question Australian mainstream 'commonsense' that circulates about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people which justifies representations of them as sickly outcasts in Australian society.

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“…Meggitt (1962) described the case of a woman suffering from psychosis, most likely related to emotional stress as well as a person suffering from mania in the Walpiri tribe from the south of the Northern Territory. Eastwell (1976Eastwell ( , 1977 commented on transient delusional states in certain Yolgnu family groups in the East Arnhemland region of the Northern Territory.…”

Section: Psychosismentioning

confidence: 99%

Australia's Aboriginal Population and Mental Health

Parker

2010

Journal of Nervous &Amp; Mental Disease

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It appears that mental illness was present in Australian Aboriginal culture prior to European colonization of Australia but was, most likely, a relatively rare occurrence. The much greater prevalence of mental illness and suicide in the current Aboriginal population is a reflection of the significant disruption to Aboriginal society and has a strong context of social and emotional deprivation. Management of the issues of mental illness in Aboriginal people requires a strong emphasis on cultural safety along with the recognition of family, culture and community in any therapeutic process.

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Psychological Disorders Among the Australian Aboriginals

Cited by 7 publications

References 19 publications

A study of factors affecting suicide in Aboriginal and ‘other’ populations in the Top End of the Northern Territory through an audit of coronial records

A study of factors affecting suicide in Aboriginal and ‘other’ populations in the Top End of the Northern Territory through an audit of coronial records

Queensland Aborigines, Multiple Realities and the Social Sources of Suffering: Psychiatry and Moral Regions of Being: Part 1

Australia's Aboriginal Population and Mental Health

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