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Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0, Open Access
Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0, Open
Journal article
From Digital Mental Health to Digital Social and Emotional Wellbeing: How Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research Influenced the Australian Government’s Digital Mental Health Agenda
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol.18(19), pp.1-18
16/09/2021
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Abstract
This paper describes the first six years of a government-initiated project to train Indigenous health professionals in digital mental health (d-MH). It illustrates how community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods were used to enable this “top-down” project to be transformed into a ‘ground-up’ community-guided process; and how, in turn, the guidance from the local Indigenous community partners went on to influence the national government’s d-MH agenda. The CBPR partnership between five community partners and a university rural health department is described, with illustrations of how CBPR harnessed the community’s voice in making the project relevant to their wellbeing needs. The local Indigenous community’s involvement led to a number of unexpected outcomes, which impacted locally and nationally. At an early stage, the conceptual framework of the project was changed from d-MH to the culturally-relevant Indigenous framework of digital social and emotional wellbeing (d-SEWB). This led to a significant expansion of the range and type of digital resources; and to other notable outcomes such as successful advocacy for an Aboriginal-specific online therapy program and for a dedicated “one-stop-shop” d-SEWB website, Wellmob, which was funded by the Australian government in 2019–2021. Some of the implications of this project for future Indigenous CBPR projects are discussed.
Details
- Title
- From Digital Mental Health to Digital Social and Emotional Wellbeing: How Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research Influenced the Australian Government’s Digital Mental Health Agenda
- Creators
- James Bennett-Levy - University Centre for Rural HealthJudy Singer - University Centre for Rural HealthDarlene Rotumah - Southern Cross UniversitySarah Bernays - University of SydneyDavid Edwards - University Centre for Rural Health
- Publication Details
- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol.18(19), pp.1-18
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Grant note
- The UCRH component of the national eMental Health in Practice collaboration was funded by the Australian Federal Government Department of Health.
- Identifiers
- 991012968468502368
- Copyright
- © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Academic Unit
- National Centre for Naturopathic Medicine; Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article