Communities along Australia’s northern coastline, home to some of the world’s most intact Aboriginal cultures, are caught in an epidemic of child suicide and self-harm that has claimed at least 50 young lives over the past decade in the NT alone. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/young-northern-territory-lives-lost-to-sorry-business/news-story/ca164713a1d9a903b858c8cf4e591947">https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/yo...

Interesting use of “home to some of the world’s most intact Aboriginal cultures”, when culture is regularly sprouted as the suicide panacea.

I’ve written on this, w/ considerable backlash.

‘Culture’ is not going to bring down the Indigenous suicide rate https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/21/culture-is-not-going-to-bring-down-the-indigenous-suicide-rate">https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...

Also interesting that there was nothing mentioning clinical assessment or the lack of evidenced prevention despite the millions that has been pumped into Indigenous led Indigenous suicide prevention, including postvention. That never gets touched on. Just tragedy, after tragedy.

But also white child suicides aren’t written about the same way. Odd when child abuse and neglect has been noted as “consistently the leading behavioural risk factor” contributing to suicide and self-harm, accounting for about 35,000 “lost” years of healthy life in 2015 alone.

I think it’s worth re-sharing this piece. Millions upon millions of dollars in Indigenous led Indigenous suicide prevention, but we aren’t see any outcomes. Just outputs.

Aboriginal suicide prevention. Where is the funding going? https://indigenousx.com.au/aboriginal-suicide-prevention-where-is-the-funding-going/">https://indigenousx.com.au/aborigina...