Barriers to mental health care and possible solutions in the young: Yarns with the Victorian Aboriginal community.

OBJECTIVE

To identify the barriers accessing health (including mental health) services by Indigenous people in Victoria, Australia, and putative solutions, through yarns with 44 members of the Victorian Aboriginal community.

METHODS

This paper systematically explores grassroots barriers and potential solutions for Indigenous young people to engage and use health (including mental health) services. Elder-governed yarns were conducted via Zoom with 44 representative Victorian Aboriginal Elders, Healers, Senior and Junior people involved in the health and wellbeing of the Victorian Aboriginal community. These yarns were analyzed through an innovative, constructivist, multi-perspectival discursive grounded theory method.

RESULTS

Five pre-eminent themes emerged: the socio-economic barriers to services, the ongoing effects of colonization, disconnection and isolation from community and Country, pressures in society of living in two worlds and lack of cultural safety and racism. Detailed and rich day-to-day barriers and possible grassroots solutions were proffered.

CONCLUSIONS

The analyzed yarns provide important detail about everyday barriers Indigenous peoples face in healthcare services and potential ways forward to improve the situation for Indigenous young people and their kinship networks. This paper can help shape future policy and its implementation. In particular, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organizations running traditional Indigenous healing programmes alongside Western health management, ensuring formal processes predominate and are monitored for their day-to-day effectiveness.