Page 62 - JCBP-3-1

Journal of Clinical and
Basic Psychosomatics Addressing Indigenous youth suicides in Victoria

Group and the Primary Health Network (PHN) were within peer education and sports settings. It leverages
instrumental in establishing guidelines, identifying community sports events and deploys peer mentors to
priority groups, selecting focus areas, and providing destigmatize mental health discussions and encourage
foundational support for regional implementation. Their help-seeking behaviors. Reports indicate that participants
key responsibilities entailed ensuring that local working gain confidence and acquire knowledge about mental
groups composed of community members, volunteers, health resources. However, the program’s reach is
and local organizations could operate effectively and tailor sometimes limited because of insufficient resources and
their suicide prevention activities to specific community geographic constraints in remote areas.
needs. Working groups supported by host organizations “Tough in It Out” is another notable program that aims
such as local councils were responsible for the direct to enhance resilience in Indigenous youth by building
implementation of activities and endeavored to adapt the mental health awareness and inculcating practical
lifespan framework to the regional context. The PHN acted crisis management strategies. This program is delivered
as a connector, facilitating essential partnerships with local through workshops, tackles common mental health issues,
organizations (e.g., the Coroner’s office) to support data inculcates emotional regulation skills, and promotes peer
access and resource sharing. Host organizations helped support. The program effectively builds youth confidence
bridge the gaps between the national model and local needs, in handling mental health challenges. However, its limited
leveraging community insights and fostering engagement scale and inconsistent funding hinder it from wielding a
to ensure that the undertaken activities were relevant broader community impact.
and sustainable in their communities. Multisectoral
35
team members can introduce discrete strategies such as The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peer-to-peer suicide prevention training in the youth, Suicide Prevention Strategy emphasizes culturally specific
understanding the distinctive needs of communities, interventions targeting social, emotional, and mental
and pushing local authorities to release funds. Further, well-being across multiple age groups and includes
stakeholders must advocate for the implementation of specific components for youth. It encourages community
newer services, research, analyses, and evaluations of involvement and ownership and aims to empower
existing programs. Stakeholders need to codesign high- Indigenous communities to drive customized suicide
quality, culturally appropriate suicide prevention services prevention efforts. The program is promising but its impact
for high-risk youth, create awareness, and motivate is often hampered by challenges in measuring long-term
their specific communities to engage in the concerned outcomes because of the absence of consistent evaluative
programs. 36 frameworks.
Each of the mentioned programs highlights the critical
7. Youth-focused programs: A critical role of culturally tailored approaches to prevent suicides by
analysis youth in Aboriginal populations. However, common pitfalls

Varied programs focusing on culturally informed across initiatives include funding instabilities, limited
approaches that resonate with Indigenous identities scalability, and gaps in long-term outcome evaluations.
and values have been designed to specifically address These difficulties underscore the need for more sustained
youth suicides in Australian Aboriginal communities. investment and systematic evaluation processes to
The “Yiriman Project” is a prominent example of such comprehensively understand the effectiveness of programs
a program that involves at-risk youth in the Kimberley and ascertain their potential for wider applications. 37
region. Young participants connect deeply with their
heritage through bush trips and activities such as land 8. Limitations
care and cultural storytelling. These processes foster a Our study is descriptive and based on a mix of peer-
sense of belonging, resilience, and community identity in reviewed and gray literature. The studied topic is relatively
the participants. Evaluations of the Yiriman Project have under-researched; therefore, we were compelled to include
reported its positive effects on the mental well-being and information obtained from discrete well-recognized
reduced suicidal ideation of participants. Nevertheless, the government websites. Furthermore, some information
program confronts pitfalls such as its excessive reliance could have been updated during or after the publication of
on intermittent funding, which makes sustained efforts this paper because of continuing developments.
challenging.
Another initiative titled “Alive and Kicking Goals!” 9. Conclusion
targets Aboriginal youth aged between 15 and 24 years. Understanding the conceptual framework underlying
This program integrates suicide prevention messaging suicides by the Indigenous people in Victoria enables a

Volume 3 Issue 1 (2025) 56 doi: 10.36922/jcbp.4217