Mental Health, Grief and Family Ties

The woman's death, and the death of his own mother, prompted Dennis McDermott to write his award-winning essay, Unknown family at the taxi stand, which is published in the latest issue of the Medical Journal of Australia.

In taking this year's Dr Ross Ingram Memorial Essay Prize, Mr McDermott, a Koori psychologist, poet and University of New South Wales Conjoint Senior Lecturer in Indigenous health, forces the reader to regard the human stories behind Indigenous Australian mental distress.

The prize is awarded each year by the MJA for the best essay by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person on Indigenous health.

"Coolly useful as data are, when statistics have real human faces there's a chance that a lost emotional resonance might return," Mr McDermott wrote in his winning essay.

"For Gubbas (non-Indigenous Australians) to come to grips with what's happening in Indigenous health in this country doesn't require a bleeding heart.

"It does require new means to 'de-Other' Indigenous Australians - to situate us, and our experiences, inside the national consciousness.

"Blackfella health won't change until we are no longer the exotics of our own land."

MJA Deputy Editor Dr Ruth Armstrong congratulated Mr McDermott and runner-up Marshall Watson, whose essay A journey of Indigenous identity will be published in the MJA later this year.

"Thanks to our external panel of judges and to Dennis, as well as … Marshall Watson and all the other entrants who shared their stories of sorrow, discovery, joy and hope with us," she said.

The Dr Ross Ingram Memorial Essay Prize will be presented at the Australian Medical Association's National Conference in Adelaide, on Saturday, 27 May 2006.

The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.