DP9-Aboriginal-Spirituality

Aboriginal Social and
Emotional Wellbeing—Ways
Forward
Recovery, as a spiritual path, can be seen as a journey by which people with psychiatric disabilities rebuild and
further develop their connectedness to themselves, to others, to their living, learning and working environments,
and to larger meaning and purpose. This journey is also a means of personal empowerment (Spaniol 2002:321).
At best our understanding is indirect and patchy, informed by a number of sensitive ethnographic accounts and
the occasional lucid and eloquent statements and observations by Aboriginal individuals and cultural brokers.
These statements suggest that mental health in an Indigenous context is better thought of as a qualitative
index of the integrity and strength of an individual’s relationship with his or her natural, spiritual and social
world (Reser 1991:222).
The term social and emotional wellbeing is a recent construct that has been developed by policy makers, service
providers and researchers as ‘an integral component of the health reform agenda’ (CRCAH n.d.:2), and is designed
to forefront Indigenous social, cultural and historical understandings of this state of being. The most important
of these, the baseline, is the normative cultural positioning of ‘complex social relationships in which individuals
and groups are intimately bound to each other and the environment’ (CRCAH n.d.:2). The rationale for such
relationships, and the opportunity to have a social life that provides a framework for social, psychological and
economic security (CRCAH n.d.:2), comes from Indigenous Spirituality, the philosophy that is the basis for the
concept of personhood in Indigenous culture.
Indigenous social and emotional wellbeing programs cover a range of interventions ‘providing key resources to
support social and emotional reconnection’; that is, to increase ‘Aboriginal ways of knowing and doing’ (CRCAH
n.d.:8). The connectedness that exists in Aboriginal society—to family, kin, the natural world and the universe—is
to be found in Spirituality, the blueprint for culture. Social and emotional wellbeing activities potentially cover
a range of ‘helping services’:
From grounding activities at the family and community level that establish, restore and maintain good social
and emotional wellbeing outcomes, to health promotion and primary, secondary and tertiary interventions
that address health and wellbeing issues through the life course, and in response to diverse social, cultural and
economic circumstances… the emphasis of CRCAH funding will be on the ‘grounded’ end of the spectrum, the
full range of social and emotional wellbeing activity will be included within the program, as it is not possible
to separate the grounded activity and the acute psychiatric care (CRCAH n.d.:6).
Helping individuals, families and communities to help themselves involves the promotion, support and maintenance
of Aboriginal Spirituality, demonstrating trust in the ability of the culture to provide for its members.
This is the preferred basis for effective approaches ‘to promote better developmental outcomes and to promote
family and individual strengths’ (CRCAH n.d.:6). The CRCAH recognises that the skills and capacities required to
achieve this are ‘not easily developed within existing health services including clinical mental health care and
mental health promotion in the clinical context’ (CRCAH n.d.:6). The CRCAH program focus is on:
• building the capacity of health and community services to move beyond the limitations of the focus
on individual clinical case management and acute care and to integrate prevention and promotion of
social and emotional wellbeing; and
• intersectoral and community-oriented capacity building aimed at sustaining initiatives that are preventive,
resilience promoting and culturally contextualised in respect of Indigenous communities.
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Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health • Discussion Paper Series: No. 9
Aboriginal Spirituality: Aboriginal Philosophy
The Basis of Aboriginal Social and Emotional Wellbeing