Indigenous suicide: Struggling communities get $10 million funding boost
Posted
A community-based support service to prevent Indigenous suicides is getting a $10 million boost as the Government begins to roll it out across Australia.
The project, trialled in Western Australia last year, will be expanded into the Northern Territory and South Australia this year, with the rest of the country to follow in 2018.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion will announce the funding on the remote Groote Eyelandt in the Northern Territory today.
"Every suicide is a tragedy and the effects on tight-knit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are often more profound, contributing to the clusters of suicide and self-harm that we see," he said in a statement.
Young Indigenous people take their own lives at five times the rate of other Australians, and in 2014 suicide was the fifth-leading cause of death for Indigenous people.
If you or anyone you know needs help:
- Lifeline on 13 11 14
- Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800
- MensLine Australia on 1300 789 978
- Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467
- Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36
- Headspace on 1800 650 890
The Critical Response Service (CRS) is led by Adele Cox, a Bunuba and Gija woman from WA who has worked in suicide prevention for almost two decades.
"Families are struggling, families aren't sure where to go," she said.
"There are so many families and communities who were not being provided with the right sort of support with regard to response times as soon as a suicide or a traumatic incident occurred."
Members of the CRS team reach out to families affected by suicide and coordinate existing support services to ensure they are delivered in a culturally appropriate way to respond to each family's particular needs.
Indigenous suicide related to poverty
More than a third of Australia's youth suicides are Indigenous, and Indigenous children make up 80 per cent of those under 12 who take their own lives, said Indigenous suicide researcher Gerry Georgatos, who works on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project (ATSISPEP).
"The suicide crisis is deepening, abyss-like, and sitting idly by cannot be an option," he said.
"The firmament of this crisis has occurred because of racism so deep it is institutionalised, that governments, one after another, [turn] the blind eye and deaf ear."
He said his research showed almost all Indigenous suicides were committed by people living in poverty, and that almost 40 per cent of Indigenous people live below the poverty line.
People fall between the cracks
Senator Scullion said a report the Government commissioned in July confirmed what he saw as he travelled from community to community.
"A myriad of support services delivered by different agencies and not-for-profit organisations but with little coordination between them to make sure families are properly supported in times of great distress," he said.
"The effect is that people fall between the cracks."
Mr Georgatos said grieving families needed ongoing psychosocial support which was not always available in remote communities.
"Not all the services respond to all suicide trauma-affected families, and some pretend to, while others disengage prematurely," he said.
"Some service responders work beyond the call of duty, to exhaustion, because others aren't doing their bit... There is a lot of inauthenticity in the suicide prevention space, but the [service] will help to authenticate and validate a little bit more of it."
He said funding had to be dedicated to the most vulnerable, "and not to carpetbaggers".
"It is imperative that there is a salt-of-the-earth approach in working alongside families, that grief is understood and that trauma is unpacked," Mr Georgatos said.
"It is imperative that advocates are there for others, spreading the love, from the very beginning, helping every member of the family."
Topics: indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, community-and-society, suicide, mental-health, youth, australia, wa, nt, sa
