It appears that mental illness was present in Australian Aboriginal culture prior to European colonization of Australia but was, most likely, a relatively rare occurrence. The much greater prevalence of mental illness and suicide in the current Aboriginal population is a reflection of the significant disruption to Aboriginal society and has a strong context of social and emotional deprivation. ...

This review discusses palliative care and end-of-life models of care for Aboriginal people in the Australian state New South Wales, and considers Aboriginal palliative care needs by reflecting on recent literature and lessons derived from Aboriginal consultation. Aboriginal people in Australia account for a very small proportion of the population, have poorer health outcomes and their culture d...

INTRODUCTION Research shows that Australian Aboriginal women experience a significantly higher rate of mortality from cervical cancer than non-Aboriginal women. We now understand that infection with human papillomavirus (HPV) is a necessary pre-requisite for cervical cancer. This knowledge, together with the development of prophylactic vaccines against the HPV types most commonly associated wit...

This paper explores palliative care issues for Australian Aboriginal patients with end-stage renal failure. Renal disease is epidemic amongst Aboriginal Australians. The Central Australian Palliative Care Service, based in the remote town of Alice Springs, sees a high proportion of renal patients, with different demographic characteristics to those seen in urban palliative care services. A case...

The Medical Journal of Australia ISSN: 0025729X 15 November 2004 181 10 531-532 ©The Medical Journal of Australia 2004 www.mja.com.au Editorials launch of the Enhanced Primary Care Package in No Among other things, the package was designed to practitioners to provide preventive care for Australian of 75 years through Medicare Benefits Schedule Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people the a l...

We investigate whether the profile of factors protecting psychosocial functioning of high risk exposed Australian Aboriginal youth are the same as those promoting psychosocial functioning in low risk exposed youth. Data on 1,021 youth aged 12-17 years were drawn from the Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey (WAACHS 2000-2002), a population representative survey of the health and we...

Communitarianism acknowledges and values, and not just instrumentally, the bonds that unite and identify communities. Communitarians also value community per se. This paper argues that trust is likely to be stronger in communities where these bonds are greater. Equity in health care is a social phenomenon. In health care, it is apparent that more communitarian societies, such as Scandinavia and...

The existence of a short-statured Aboriginal population in the Far North Queensland (FNQ) rainforest zone of Australia's northeast coast and Tasmania has long been an enigma in Australian anthropology. Based on their reduced stature and associated morphological traits such as tightly curled hair, Birdsell and Tindale proposed that these "Barrinean" peoples were closely related to "negrito" peop...

Aboriginal Australian children experience profound oral health disparities relative to their non-Aboriginal counterparts. In response to community concerns regarding Aboriginal child oral health in the regional town of Port Augusta, South Australia, a child dental health service was established within a Community Controlled Aboriginal Health Service. A partnership approach was employed with the...

OBJECTIVES To describe the prevalence and characteristics of microcephaly in a geographically defined Australian population. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Descriptive epidemiological study of microcephaly cases ascertained by the Western Australian Register of Developmental Anomalies, 1980-2015, defining microcephaly as an occipito-frontal head circumference below the third percentile or m...