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State of indigenous mental health in Australia - a colonial legacy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Sanil Rege
Sanil Rege*
Affiliation:
Northern Sydney Central Coast Mental Health Service, Australia, email rege_1@yahoo.es
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The Aboriginal culture of Australia is one of the oldest cultures on earth, dating back 50 000 years. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) people are the indigenous inhabitants of Australia, constituting 2.4% of the population. The health status of these ‘First Australians’ has been described as a source of national shame, with the life expectancy approximately 17 years lower than that of other Australians (Eades, 2000). This gap in life expectancy is also significantly larger than that of other countries with indigenous populations and a history of colonisation, such as the USA, Canada and New Zealand (Ring & Firman, 1998). This paper offers an overview of the impact of colonisation and its subsequent influence on the social and emotional well-being of ATSI people.

Type
Special Paper
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 98 - 100
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2009

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