Tracy Westerman is growing an army of indigenous psychologists.
The Westerman Jilya Institute has managed to do what governments have failed to achieve for decades, according to its founder, Tracy Westerman.
Dr Westerman and the institute have developed a scholarship program to increase the number of indigenous psychologists across Australia, who can provide culturally sensitive services in the hope of reducing suicide rates within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
In its inaugural year, the program provided support to 15 indigenous psychology students nationally, some of whom are planning to take their skills back to rural communities.
“The most exciting thing is that we have got three indigenous students studying psychology who are either from the Kimberley or want to go and work back in the Kimberley,” Dr Westerman said.
“That’s more than the government has managed to achieve in decades.”
The scholarship includes $10,000 per year to put towards living costs, access to datasets and best practice research, and one-on-one mentoring with Dr Westerman, a psychologist and Nyamal woman.
Dr Westerman is the founder of Indigenous Psychological Services, the 2018 WA Australian of the Year, and a recipient of the Order of Australia for work in Aboriginal mental health.
She established the institute after reading the Fogliani coronial inquest, which was launched in response to 13 deaths of Aboriginal children in the Kimberley between November 2012 and March 2016.
“Once I started reading successive coroners’ inquiries, it became clear that people were missing the point of what bereaved communities were crying out for,” Dr Westerman told Business News.
“When you are from a remote area, service access is challenging; that’s the first reality.
“Second, the likelihood of services being culturally appropriate and capable of providing the complex clinical therapeutic and other interventions with high-risk indigenous populations is even more unlikely.”
Having grown up in the Pilbara, and now as an Aboriginal psychologist, Dr Westerman said this was something she could help remedy.
Initially, Dr Westerman spent $50,000 of her own money starting the scholarship, but as interest in the program grew, she expanded the program to accept students nationally at any university.
Dr Westerman said training more Aboriginal psychologists was an obvious solution to increase accessibility to services.
“We are playing generational catch-up; we currently have just 218 indigenous psychologists in Australia,” she said.
“Based on prevalence data, this means there would be around 1,000 high-risk Aboriginal people in need for every indigenous psychologist.
“Bearing in mind not all registered psychologists practice clinically.”
The one-on-one support the scholarship provided was keeping students at university, Dr Westerman said.
“A big part of it is the drop-out rate is so high, and [that’s] why my personal mentoring is such a vital part of the program,” she said.
“Just in the last six months, I’ve probably stopped quite a few of the students from pulling out because of the pure pressure.”
After receiving 34 applications and funding 15 students in the first year of the scholarship program, Dr Westerman is working to select the second group of students this year.
“This year I am going through the applications, and I can’t get through them because they’re extraordinary and the things they are battling, the barriers they are facing, are extraordinary,” she said.
The program has attracted significant philanthropic support, with about $800,000 in donations in the first year and support from the WA government’s Department of Justice to pay for two scholarship positions.
Some notable names, including Kim Beazley (a patron of the Westerman Jilya Institute), have thrown their support behind the cause.
The institute is run by volunteers, with just 2 per cent of donations going to administration fees, Dr Westerman said.
“That’s the idea, that the money goes into giving as many scholarships as we can to get as many indigenous psychologists into those high-risk communities as we can,” she said.
However, a recent $403,000 Lotterywest grant will enable the institute to hire three staff: a chief operating officer, a fulltime researcher, and a communications manager.
The extra resources will relieve the pressure on the board, which has been preparing for a large fundraiser.
For its first anniversary, the institute is planning a concert on World Suicide Prevention Day (September 10) to raise money and awareness about the rates of indigenous suicide.
Dr Westerman said she noticed people hadn’t previously been talking about indigenous suicide on the day, despite rates being a lot higher than that of the general population.
“The reason we branded our annual Jilya fundraising concert with World Suicide Prevention Day is because, despite the fact we have among the highest rates of child suicide in the world in our indigenous communities and two and a half times the rate of suicide compared to non-indigenous [people], indigenous suicide was not mentioned on World Suicide Prevention Day,” she said.
“The Jilya concert is about all Australians coming together and saying, ‘These lives matter’.”
Dr Westerman said she was hoping the event would raise money to fund 15 scholarships.
The concert will be held at Winthrop Hall at the University of Western Australia and will feature artists including John Butler, Gina Williams & Guy House, Naomi Pigram, Bojesse, and Kobi Morrison.
A total of 100 seats have been saved for bereaved family and community members to attend the concert, which will be paid for by donations from other concert-goers or donors.
If you or anyone you know needs help you can call Lifeline WA on 13 11 14.
