The Aboriginal Mental Health Worker Program: The challenge of supporting Aboriginal involvement in mental health care in the remote community context

Amanda Harris · Gary Robinson

32 citations0/0 files storedAdvances in Mental Health

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Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights Psychiatric care and mental health services Mental Health Treatment and Access

Abstract

This paper draws on our experience as evaluators of the Aboriginal Mental Health Worker Program that has been operating in eight remote communities across the Top End of the Northern Territory, Australia, for over four years. The program aimed to fund the placement of Aboriginal Mental Health Workers (AMHWs) in remote community health centres, to work under the clinical leadership of General Practitioners and to contribute to development of a culturally appropriate community based mental health care service for Indigenous people. In this paper, we examine the key features of the AMHW program and the originating partnership, the degree of integration of AMHWs in health centre processes and the provision of support for the development of the AMHW role in community mental health work. While there are many examples in this program of AMHWs providing highly valued services within their communities, the evaluation showed that the program did not achieve clear commitments to develop mental health practice around the AMHWs’ role. In addition there was variability in levels of local managerial support for the AMHWs, vulnerability to staff turnover and other discontinuities, as well as tensions in views about what the role of the AMHWs should be. Should it be culturally informed, clinically-related mental health work or community ‘wellbeing work’, and how should each role be supported? Together these factors undermined the sustainability of positive achievements within the program.

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References

2007The burden of disease and injury in Australia 2003 2000Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 1997Bringing them home : report of the national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families 1999Second National Mental Health Plan 2000RURAL MENTAL HEALTH: NEITHER ROMANTICISM NOR DESPAIR 2002Diagnostic and therapeutic procedures among Australian hospital patients identified as Indigenous 2004Ambivalent helpers and unhealthy choices: public health practitioners’ narratives of Indigenous ill-health 2001A model of therapeutic intervention with Indigenous Australians

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