My body’s getting healthy and my mind is getting healthy with it. Considering Urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Conceptions of Health.

doi:10.28933/irjph-2017-01-01

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 20 publications

(30 reference statements)

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“…For example, sexual health promotion programmes have integrated traditional cultural activities to help young people build sexual health knowledge and skills (Monchalin et al, 2016), or primary health-care initiatives where connecting with Elders has been shown to improve mental health outcomes (Hadjipavlou et al, 2018;Tu et al, 2019). Other examples include chronic illness management programmes, where outdoor activities have been used to rebuild connections to land and country and thereby support better health and wellbeing (Parmenter et al, 2017), and youth suicide prevention programmes where cultural activities seek to address the loss of community cohesion from which youth suicide may derive (Barker et al, 2017). This kind of 'culture as treatment' research is powerful in its capacity to demonstrate how contexts matter, especially contexts that support and sustain Indigenous identities and pride, and demonstrates the very positive impact that cultural approaches can have on Indigenous wellbeing.…”

Section: 'Culture As Treatment' Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond deficit: ‘strengths‐based approaches’ in Indigenous health research

Bryant

Bolt

Botfield

et al. 2021

Sociology Health & Illness

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Health research concerning Indigenous peoples has been strongly characterised by deficit discourse—a ‘mode of thinking’ that is overly focused on risk behaviours and problems. Strengths‐based approaches offer a different perspective by promoting a set of values that recognise the capacities and capabilities of Indigenous peoples. In this article, we seek to understand the conceptual basis of strengths‐based approaches as currently presented in health research. We propose that three main approaches exist: ‘resilience’ approaches concerned with the personal skills of individuals; ‘social–ecological’ approaches, which focus on the individual, community and structural aspects of a person's environment; and ‘sociocultural’ approaches, which view ‘strengths’ as social relations, collective identities and practices. We suggest that neither ‘resilience’ nor ‘social–ecological’ approaches sufficiently problematise deficit discourse because they remain largely informed by Western concepts of individualised rationality and, as a result, rest on logics that support notions of absence and deficit. In contrast, sociocultural approaches tend to view ‘strengths’ not as qualities possessed by individuals, but as the structure and character of social relations, collective practices and identities. As such, they are better able to capture Indigenous ways of knowing and being and provide a stronger basis on which to build meaningful interventions.

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