“Standing Strong Together”

Abstract

As for First Nations people in other colonised nations around the globe, First Nations people in Australia have substantially higher morbidity and mortality rates than non-Indigenous people, including higher rates of mental illness, contributed to by factors such as disadvantage, racism, and poverty (Donovan et al., 2022). However, rather than more services, it has been proposed that there should be a positive, socially based approach to improving mental health in Indigenous communities. The population wide Act-Belong-Commit mental health promotion campaign appeared to be consistent with such an approach. Hence, as a result of extensive consultation with community members, a culturally adapted version of the campaign was developed and launched in a remote Indigenous community in Western Australia. Interviews were conducted with key stakeholders and community members two years later to assess campaign impact. This Case Study draws on a number of papers on this intervention, in particular Anwar-McHenry et al. (2022), Donovan et al. (2022), and Donovan et al. (2018). As far as we are aware, this cultural adaptation of the Act-Belong-Commit campaign is the first reported Indigenous adaptation of a population-wide mental health promotion campaign.