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

Abstract

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.

Queensland Aborigines, Multiple Realities and the Social Sources of Suffering Part 2 Suicide, Spirits and Symbolism

“…As established in the first part of Part 1 of this paper (Cox 2009) even though the meanings of the experiences are socially contested, the majority considered them 'normal' in a mental health sense. Despite differences in how they are interpreted there is general agreement that such experiences are part of everyday life.…”

“…As argued elsewhere (Cox 2009) historical and contemporary conditions give death and separation a unique historical and political significance to the residents and produce profound fury and fear arising from an entrenched sense of insecurity. I argue further that the primary social value of family and the invocation of spirits are claims to an autonomous moral universe and attempts to assert order and control.…”

“…Part one (Cox 2009) describes the interaction of interpenetrating interpretations of voices and visions in terms of Christian religions, Aboriginal cosmologies and local politics and the historical realities that give rise to rendering Aboriginality as spirituality. In discussing contested local meanings of such experiences it concludes that 'the other condition' of Aboriginality is established as spirituality.…”

Contextualizing Mental Health Nursing Encounters in Australian Remote Aboriginal Communities: Part I, History and Customs

“…The passage of 40 years has not eradicated nor diminished the raw personal memories and trans-generational trauma experienced. Aboriginal reactions to health care should be understood as a product of both current and historical experiences of the health and criminal justice systems, that is, the deep interconnection between policing, health, and religious interventions (Cox, 2009). Anderson and Humphery (2007) noted that Cox's research highlights "the clinic, the hospital, and medical intervention[s] generally, are associated in historical memory with normalizing and disciplinary practices-and the experience of them continues to be one of colonization and racism" (p. 4).…”

Diversity, Disruption, Continuity: Parenting and Social and Emotional Wellbeing Amongst Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islanders

“…The experiences of Indigenous families indicate that professionals often bring a particular mindset to their work. Specifically, such workers interpret peoples' experiences within a mechanistic biomedical framework, which fails to take account of sociocultural explanations of various human experiences (Cox, 2009;Hunter, 1993;Reser, 1991;Swan & Raphael, 1995). Hunter (1993) noted that, as early as 1988, the National Aboriginal Mental Health Association called for the provision of culturally informed programs of counselling and training.…”