Media release

2011 Dr Ross Ingram Memorial Competition winners

Published 27 May 2011

AMA National Conference 2011

A Canberra-based Indigenous researcher’s moving story of her son’s battle with mental illness and a Kalgoorlie-based Indigenous health worker’s animated story of a “tooth fairy” who educates Indigenous children about healthy lifestyles have won this year’s Dr Ross Ingram Memorial Competition.

Ms Lindy Moffatt, an Indigenous Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), won the essay prize for her article Mental illness or spiritual illness: what should we call it?

In the essay, Ms Moffatt, a Wakka Wakka woman from Queensland, explored the hypothesis that the suffering of trauma and pain within Indigenous communities is passed down through generations, with transgenerational trauma contributing to mental illness.

Ms Moffatt said that while her son was ill and hearing voices, he appeared to be speaking fluently in an Aboriginal language.

“Any Indigenous person who has experienced this would share my belief that Indigenous mental illness is also spiritual illness and is deeply connected to our spirituality and cultural beliefs,” Ms Moffatt said.

Aboriginal Health Worker Ms Alison Dimer won the inaugural artwork prize for her animation, Alfie the Tooth Fairy.

Ms Dimer worked with artists and children at three local schools in the goldfields area of Western Australia to develop Alfie as part of the Western Desert Kidney Health Project.

Alfie is an unwise tooth fairy whose love of fast food and soft drink causes him to develop diabetes.

At the Healing Tree, Alfie becomes fit and health-conscious, and returns to his community to educate them about diabetes and its risks.

Both winners were published in the 16 May 2011 edition of the Medical Journal of Australia.

The competition is open to Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who are undertaking work, study or research in Indigenous health, and was extended this year to include both an essay and an artwork.

Each winner receives $2,000, donated by the Australian Medical Publishing Company, publisher of the MJA.

The Prize is named after Ross Ingram, an Indigenous doctor who died in 2003, aged 36, of cardiovascular disease. He was the first Wiradjuri person to become a doctor.