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Purro Birik - (Healthy Spirit)
4. Project Context
4.1 The Victorian
Aboriginal Community
The Victorian Aboriginal
community is made up of a number of communities based on language and
cultural groups, extended family networks or clans, and Aboriginal people
from other States and Territories.
Aboriginal people make up
about 0.5 per cent of Victoria's total population. Fifty per cent of the
Aboriginal population live outside the metropolitan area compared with 28
per cent of the non-Aboriginal population.
The Victorian Aboriginal
population is younger, has far fewer people aged over 65 years, and has a
life expectancy still 10-15 years less than that of the non-Aboriginal
population. In 1994, the unemployment rate of Aboriginal people was 38 per
cent, and over half the population relied on government payments as their
main source of income.
Aboriginal people are
underrepresented among clients of health services that rely on people to
refer themselves (such as preventative health and preschool services), and
overrepresented among clients of services that are used as a result of
government intervention (such as juvenile justice and the protection and
care of children).
Ways Forward, The National
Consultancy Report on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health
(Swan and Raphael 1995) reported:
Mental health problems were
a major difficulty for most communities and that there were few mental
health resources available to deal with them. While data was generally
inadequate, available evidence of a systematic kind indicated that
Aboriginal people suffered mental health problems such as depression at a
very high rate compared to non-Aboriginal people, that rates of self harm
and suicide are higher, and that substance abuse, domestic violence, child
abuse and disadvantage contribute additional risk factors. Trauma and grief
were seen as overwhelming problems, both related to past history of loss and
traumatisation and current frequent losses with excess mortality in family
and kinship networks.
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