A Conversation About… Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, Climate Change and Covid 19 – Part 4

Pat Dudgeon is from the Bardi people in Western Australia. She is a psychologist and professor at the Poche Centre for Aboriginal Health and the School of Indigenous Studies at UWA. Her area of research includes Indigenous social and emotional wellbeing and suicide prevention.

She is the director of the Centre of Best Practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention at UWA. She is also the lead chief investigator of a national research project, Transforming Indigenous Mental Health and Wellbeing that aims to develop approaches to Indigenous mental health services that promote cultural values and strengths as well as empowering users. She has many publications in Indigenous mental health, in particular, the Working Together Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health and Wellbeing Principals and Practice 2014.

Alan has 40+ years of experience as a Consultant Psychiatrist of Royal North Shore Hospital and Community Mental Health Services (where he was Service Director and  Director of Clinical Services), and at Far West NSW Mental Health Services (current).  In March 2013, he was appointed as inaugural Deputy Commissioner of the NSW Mental Health Commission, and in 2014, conferred as an Officer of the Order of Australia.

He has been invited speaker and/or performed consultancies and reviews of service development in most Australian states and territories, UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, USA, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Germany and New Zealand.

He is the author/co author of more than 160 published journal articles, chapters, and books on studies of 24 hour community-based alternatives to acute and long term inpatient care, rehabilitation and recovery, integrated mental health service systems; interdisciplinary mental health teams, including peer workers; assertive care management; early intervention in psychosis; psychiatric stigma; co-occurring disorders, deinstitutionalization, family interventions, cultural influences on mental health service systems, impaired practitioners; rural, remote and global mental health, human rights and mental illness, and mental health impact on and responses by Indigenous communities to “domino” climate change crises, including droughts, bushfires, floods and pandemics.

Stewart Sutherland was born and raised in Wellington NSW the heart of Wiradjuri country. For over 2 decades he has worked in Indigenous health, in more recent years focusing on identity and mental health particularly Social and Emotional Wellbeing. Stewart finished his PHD, at the Australian National University Canberra, the focus of which was the interplay between reconciliation (apology) and the social emotional wellbeing of people forcibly removed from their families. He is the inaugural Associate Dean First Nations, College of Health and Medicine, and the Chair Indigenous Health School of Medicine and Psychology.