For 24-hour crisis support please call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. Mental health resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth are available via YarnSpace.
In the space of nine days this month, five Indigenous girls died by suicide. A 15-year-old from Western Australia. Another from Perth. A 14-year-old from East Kimberley. And two 12-year-olds; one from Port Headland, WA, and another from South Australia.
That’s five girls under the age of 16. Five children who felt so desperate, so hopeless they chose to take their own lives.
One of the girls is believed to have been a victim of bullying.
The schoolgirl from Perth posted a cry for help on Facebook hours before she took her own life.
“Once I’m gone, the bullying and the racism will stop,” the young girl wrote.
“She was really upset by it,” the girl’s 17-year-old sister told The Australian. “There was racism involved – a lot of the time it was just random people who don’t realise what they’re saying.”
According to The Australian, another child, a 12-year-old boy, is also reportedly on life support in Brisbane following a suspected attempted suicide. He was flown from Roma to Brisbane last week.
These deaths are a tragic reflection of what ought to be considered a national health crisis. For the suicide rate among Indigenous Australians is three times higher than it is among the rest of the population, and there’s been no appreciable reduction for a decade. In 2017, that equated to 165 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people dying by suicide.
Among Indigenous youth, the picture is all the more distressing. According to data compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, suicide is the leading cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people between the ages of five and 17, accounting for 40 per cent of deaths within that age group.
As Matthew Cooke, former chair of The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, previously noted, there are specific political, cultural and historic considerations that forge the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous mental health.
“For example, we know that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to be adversely affected by racism, disconnection from culture, and the long history of dispossession. All of these factors contribute to poor mental health, substance misuse and higher suicide rates,” he wrote.
“As a matter of priority, suicide prevention programs that are tailored to the needs of the whole community and focused on prevention should be available to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. All programs should be offered in close proximity to community and should be age appropriate as well as culturally sensitive.”
The recent tragedies come as Western Australia awaits a final report from an inquest into 13 Indigenous youth suicides in the Kimberley region between 2012 to 2016, including that of a 10-year-old girl.
Rates of suicide among the Indigenous population in the Kimberley are higher than anywhere else in Australia.
While the number of Indigenous suicides in the Kimberley reportedly fell in 2018, the number of suicides by Indigenous children were on the rise.
According to National Indigenous Critical Response project coordinator Gerry Georgatos, seven of the last nine Indigenous people to take their life in the Kimberley region were children.
Top Comments
I'd confidently wager there'd be much more coverage of this and efforts made to work out what's going on and a solution to it if it had happened in say, Double Bay or Prahran. Poor kids.
I am no great fan of Andrew Bolt. but read his article today about the conditions these girls are living in and see why they believe suicide is the only way out.
It is a national disgrace.
Just to remind you all, you all absolutely crucified Tony Abbott for saying these outback communities should be closed down.
How's that cultural enrichment working out for the girls that have to actually live it?
I literally just finished reading the Herald Sun over lunch. Had a look back through twice, no article by Andrew Bolt in today's paper...
And yeah, people sure were critical of TA for his annual virtue signalling. As for his calls to close communities down. If his qualifier for a community being closed is that there is rape or suicide in that community, we'd better shut Melbourne and Sydney first, they have far higher incidents of those.
Ever heard of per capita Funbun???? And Tony Abbott has done more hands on work for Aboriginal people than almost anyone on this site I would suggest, most of it unpublicised.
He certainly has done more virtue signalling with Aboriginal people while doing nothing to support their cause than anyone else I can remember, even ole Kevin "Anyone Want to Take My Photo?" Rudd comes second to him.
And yep, I have heard of per capita. Have you heard about all the absolutely abhorrent, disgraceful things we did to the Aboriginal people that started this cycle? Their culture didn't have much in the way of homelessness, unemployment, domestic violence and disease before we tried to force them to follow our culture.
During the time these five girls took their own lives, 20 boys will have done so. Why is that the lives of the 20 boys is not mentioned? Why should 5 girls be a national emergency while 4 times as many boys is no big deal?
Heard this discussed on ABC radio by the head of the NICR - boy's suicide rates is absolutely a concern and it's gotten a lot of focus and is going down: this increase in suicide rates amongst indigenous girls is new and something that needs attention as well. It's not either/or, we need both.
I'd imagine there's more coverage of the 5 girls who actually killed themselves than the 20 boys who theoretically might is because the 20 boys is only theoretical.
Seriously, what a demented argument to make...
It is far more then theoretical.
In Western Australia in 2015:
There were 394 deaths due to suicide, 292 (74%) of which were males and 102 (26%) of which were females.
Suicide rates are typically much higher among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men than women.
The peak age of suicide is 30-34 years for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men (3 times the rate of other men of this age) and 20-24 years for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women (4 times the rate of other women).
The suicide gap is largest among young people. The suicide rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 15-19 year old males (37.8 per 100,000 persons) and females (16.1) are around four times that for non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males (10.1) and females (4.0).
Similarly, for 20-24 year olds, the suicide rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males (64.2 per 100,000 persons) is over three times the rate for non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males (19.3) and the rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander females (20.1) is four times that for non- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander females (5.0).
The only thing I was wrong about for the age group in question is the ration. It was ONLY twice as many boys as girls but no big deal is if Funbun.
https://www.lifeinmindaustr...
Male Suicides In Australia Up 10% in 2017
The number of male suicides in Australia has risen by nearly 10% from 2,151 deaths in 2016 to 2,348 deaths in 2017, the highest annual figure in over a decade. Suicide now kills more than 8 Australians a day, taking the lives of more than 6 men and 2 women a day on average
https://www.amhf.org.au/mal...
Reverse this and it would be a national emergency in any free world nation.
The above is confirmed here" http://www.health.gov.au/in...
Once again, the only time panic begins is when females take their own lives. When it is just males. no big deal as YOU have shown yourself Funbun.
I also suppose the world view that males are expendable as shown by the fact that the UNITED NATIONS turned over several thousand men and boys knowing they would be killed by those they turned them over too.
And remember the "Save our girls" when 110 girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram? Why was nothing said about the thousand boys that were killed? I guess it does not matter as long as the dead are male does it Funbun as all you will have to say about all of this is just that it is a demented argument.
As David S has pointed out, you seem to be making it an either or. Not to mention you've also shown there are plenty of organisations gathering information and working on trying to prevent or help male suicides, so I don't know why you're acting like this represents "MEN AND BOYS DON'T MATTER ONLY GIRLS DO!"
And well, you're on a site that covers womens issues (and reality tv), on an article about suicides by female aboriginals and how they're not represented enough, carrying on because you've decided boys aren't been given enough coverage. If you don't feel that's demented that's ok, try silly, inane, asinine, hare-brained, ridiculous, ludicrous, preposterous or fatuous. They all cover it.