Indigenous mental health and wellness

CONSIDER and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander quality appraisal tool speak to outcomes that are beneficial at a community level versus solely individual level measures (Harfield et al., 2020; Huria et al., 2019). Understanding the motivation of Indigenous people to participate in research has been shown to differ from non-Indigenous people and can largely be met by engaging Indigenous people. Increased engagement of Indigenous people throughout the research process may have improved several quality assessment domains such as selection bias (i.e. response rate and recruitment) and withdrawals/dropouts. Not only were actual involvement of Indigenous peoples and organizations and their roles often unclear, wording to describe involvement also varied greatly. As observed in this review, studies varied greatly in this regard and perhaps most apparently so, in the reporting. Pomerville et al. (2016) aimed to understand the landscape of empirical work on psychotherapies for Indigenous populations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, specifically understanding how much research exists, the types of research and their key findings.

Indigenous peoples in the design of health policies

Offers immediate help for all Indigenous peoples across Canada 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. At Inclusive Mind Matters, we Cultural humility resources for professionals believe that healing doesn’t come from one place, one language, or one way of knowing. Mental health justice must be more than inclusive. It’s land-based therapy and a community feast. When Western systems fail to see this, they don’t just offer inadequate care.

If asked, counsellors can work with you to find other wellness supports that are accessible near you. These include (1) differing views upon what constitutes mental health, the nature of the… “Engaging youth in imaginative play for social transformation offers an opportunity for personal healing.”

Other ways to access

By promoting community-level solutions to health and wellbeing, tribal communities may reclaim collective strength and effectiveness (Chino & DeBruyn, 2006). Further, familiarity with interconnections between physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and the environment support Native worldviews of health and wellness (The National Tribal Behavioral Health Agenda, 2016) that may be incorporated into care. Within mental health more generally, use of paraprofessionals from the community may increase professional capacity, help with acceptability of treatments (Filene, Kaminski, Valle, & Cachat, 2013; Mendenhall et al., 2014), contribute to increased uptake and retention, and enhance scale-up and sustainability of critical mental health interventions for underserved groups (Hoeft et al., 2018). If a community is located near Tribal Colleges and Universities (see U.S. Department of Education & the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education, 2018), there may be points of collaboration to promote education and training of community mental health workers. Notably, community health workers reported their own positive health-promoting behavior changes as a result of participating in training and sharing this information with their families and local communities.

The forum adopted an NGT, a structured method used for generating ideas and identifying solutions within groups, with the intention of generating priorities and directions for Indigenous mental health in the region. Indigenous peoples residing in the RMWB experienced one of the largest wildfire evacuations in Canadian history in 2016 (known as the Horse River wildfire) which resulted in community destruction and displacement, loss of homes, jobs, finances, lives as well as injuries and separation from loved ones. Many Indigenous communities’ perspectives on health are holistic and centred on a connection to culture 29, 30. Moreover, self-determination, defined as the individual and collective right to have control over health, education, and economic systems, is a key determinant of health for Indigenous individuals and communities . This paper contributes valuable insights to applying collaborative and consensus-based facilitation approaches to strengthen cross-sectoral engagement for Indigenous mental health.

• Heck et al. (2021) described how “physical distancing makes it difficult to interact with people who are at risk of experiencing mental health challenges and to organize ways to collectively grieve and heal” .
• Montesanti’s research is centered on developing culturally-strengthening interventions to promote positive mental health and wellness.
• Playing gospel songs while cleaning your on an early Sunday morning, or dancing with your friends in your living room aren’t just cultural traditions, they are forms of care.
• If funding levels continue to stagnate, the health status of Native Americans will continue to decline, resulting in even greater needs in the future.

Modes of travel are suggested to be considered in the proximity measures as access to transportation option influences accessibility to healthcare . Statistical index methods measure health service accessibility as supply per capita within a certain geographical unit for which the supply can be captured as the health practitioners (e.g., full-time-equivalent psychiatrists and psychologists ) and specific services consumed (e.g., referrals to a mental clinics ). Instead, these documents were considered as examples of empirical practices in mental health services, reflecting specific local contexts that may not represent all possible cases around the world. We also used variations such as “mental health care”, “mental healthcare”, and “psychiatric care” in place of “mental health service”.