The Pattern of Psychiatric Morbidity in a Victorian Urban Aboriginal General Practice Population

Abstract

Victorian Aboriginal people, most of whom live an urban lifestyle, form a distinct cultural group within the wider Victorian community. This paper describes a unique psychosocial study of urban Aboriginal adults attending a general practitioner at the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service in Fitzroy. The frequency and nature of psychiatric disorders among survey respondents is reported, together with a discussion of the association between this morbidity and certain sociodemographic variables.

Liaison Psychiatry with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

“…Studies of all people referred to a comparable C-L setting in Melbourne found depression to be more common than emerged in this study [29]. Depression is also known to be prevalent in Indigenous Australians in the community [8,30], so it was surprising to find that depression was diagnosed less often than personality disorder. Depression may have been misdiagnosed as personality disorder, an uncertain diagnosis in this population given the high rates of psychosocial adversity, multiple comorbidity, and communication issues (particularly pertaining to cultural expressions of illness).…”

Australia's Aboriginal Population and Mental Health

“…It has been noted that the admission to hospital of Aboriginal men with severe mood and neurotic disorders is 1.2 times the rate of the non-indigenous population with the rate for Aboriginal women being the same as the non-indigenous population. However, community studies on urban Aboriginal populations such as the one conducted by McKendrick et al (1992) demonstrated that 54% of Aboriginal people tested with standard psychiatric rating scales were suffering from psychiatric illness and that depression was the most common among this group.…”

The Problem of Dementia in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities: An Overview

“…Indeed, in this population, the concept of``risk factors'' is redundant ' (p. 414). Other studies have reported high rates of psychological distress, especially for those living in urban settings (SAHC, 1991;McKendrick et al, 1992) and disproportionate numbers of the Aboriginal population in receipt of mental health services (Somerford et al, 1995). However, it should also be pointed out that, in many parts of Australia, indigenous people make less use of mainstream mental health services than non-indigenous people (Saggers and Gray, 1988;Johnson, 1991;AMSC, 1991;Kunitz, 1994).…”

“…The lack of appropriate services (Reser, 1991) has resulted in increasing indigenous involvement in both State and Commonwealth mainstream services and in the establishment and running of services by, and for, indigenous people (McKendrick et al, 1992). These include general medical services such as the Aboriginal Medical Services Cooperative in Sydney and the Victorian Aboriginal Mental Health Network in Melbourne, as well as community and residential services for elderly people.…”