Winners of Indigenous health essay and art awards announced
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 are this year’s winners of the Medical Journal of Australia’s prestigious Dr Ross Ingram Memorial Competition.
The competition recognises writing and artwork by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people working in health-related areas that conveys original and positive ideas promoting health gains and equity for Indigenous Australians.
Indigenous Visiting Research Fellow at Australia’s premier Indigenous research organisation, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), Ms Lindy Moffatt won the essay prize for her article Mental illness or spiritual illness: what should we call it?
In her 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.
In other words, transgenerational trauma within Indigenous communities contributes to mental illness.
Speaking of events that had occurred during her son’s illness, Ms Moffatt said in response to her son hearing voices he appeared to be speaking fluently in an Aboriginal language. “I thought that I was imagining what I had heard until family members and workers at the hospital told me that they had witnessed him doing the same thing.”
“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,” she 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.
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.
The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.
The statements or opinions that are expressed in the MJA reflect the views of the authors and do not represent the official policy of the AMA unless that is so stated.
CONTACT: Ms Alison Dimer 0458 991 442
Mr Peter Windsor 0400 554 603
(on behalf of Ms Lindy Moffatt)
