Nyamal Woman and psychologist Dr Tracy Westerman AM has built network of forty-one Indigenous psychology students throughout Australia working with her to tackle systemic racism head on.

The work comes at a critical time. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) have reported another year where suicide is a leading cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The incidence of suicide is trending up for Indigenous people, with the rate for Indigenous youth being twice as high than non-Indigenous.

The widespread impact of suicide on communities was demonstrated in a 2018 study by the American Association of Suicidology, where it was established that for one suicide there were 135 people exposed, with each of these persons potentially needing clinical support.

It was in response to a cluster of deaths of thirteen Kimberley children by suicide that Dr Westerman, a former Australian of the Year (WA) and practicing psychologist of twenty-one years' experience, established the Westerman Jilya Institute for Indigenous Mental Health program, which supports the growth and development of future Indigenous Psychologists.

"Jilya" which means "my child" in Dr Westerman's Nyamal language, commenced in response to hearing the voices of many bereaved Indigenous parents and four successive government inquiries into suicides in the Kimberley.

Dr Westerman said "the reality is that our highest risk communities are our most remote".

"Children should not be dying as a result of a lack of access to services."

Kickstarting the program with a personal donation of $50,000, Dr Westerman established the Indigenous Psychology Scholarship Program and now personally funds an equity scholarship at $30,000 per year, whilst simultaneously working for no salary, mentoring students across Australia and sitting on the board of directors.

"I have six Indigenous psychology students ready to go to the Kimberley, with forty-one spread throughout the country, Our focus this year is Alice Springs and getting at least three future psychologists from there.

"We are targeting our highest risk communities and finding students who no scholarship is available for let alone a program that personally supports and mentors them."

She said although the scholarship or Institute has not received one cent of Federal Government funding, the community support has been outstanding.

"Through public donations, corporates, philanthropists and personal fundraising I have brought in close to nine million dollars in long term commitments and support from some pretty big hitters including ex-PM Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull; Julia Zemiro; John Butler; the Myer Foundation; Lotterwest, MP Ben Franklin, the Healing Foundation, UWA; John Butler; Gina Williams AM and many many more."

Being from a remote community herself, Dr Westerman was required to study Year 11 and 12 via distance education and knew from a young age that psychology was her chosen path.

Due to this firsthand experience of the obstacles that many Indigenous psychology students face, Jilya was designed to not only provide financial assistance but mentorship and pastoral support for all students involved with the program.

"We catch up with them as much as we can and once a year, we have the fundraising concert with high profile individuals assisting to generate attention to the cause and big named artists. We get all the students over to Perth for one or two days so they can share ideas; research concepts and attend the concert. These are our future leaders, and we haven't had a student in our program drop out. We have had a few students that have a had a little break and some that are literally just overwhelmed, and we pick them up and we put them back together again."

Dr Westerman noted that after four enquiries and suicides are getting worse.

"There has been a failure to apply the best possible science and the evidence into what communities have been telling us for a long time," she said.

"There is nothing worse than having your pain denied and interpreted in way that Aboriginal people get blamed for their own child's death. Deficits in family, in culture, it becomes a false narrative."

Dr Westerman said it comes down to fundamentals and basics, noting that there is currently an 18-month wait to see a psychologist and of the 13 children who died in the Kimberley, all died without a mental health assessment.

"Only six per cent of Aboriginal people in critical mental health need access services; with just 218 Indigenous psychologists in the country this means that for every 4,000 Aboriginal people in critical mental health need there is just one Indigenous psychologist," she said.

"We have increased that, potentially by 20 per cent in a few short years. We know that having a counsellor that shares your culture significantly improves treatment outcome, so why has government failed generationally to invest in something so basic as upskilling our highest risk communities with a local workforce capable of it?"

She notes that instead, there has been a continuation of funding to non-Indigenous programs despite there being "more value added by supporting critical services on the ground".

"Yet no government funded program has shown that it is reducing Indigenous suicide risk, because no one is collecting data on Indigenous suicide or mental health risk reduction nor are they required to," Dr Westerman said.

"Our programs are the only ones that do, but we cannot get any funding for them and were recently rejected for federal funding to upskill three high risk communities in delivery of these programs over time and track it against the suicide death rate. Literal world's best practice, but can't get a cent of government support for them."

Dr Westerman's PhD resulted in the world's first screening tool for at-risk Aboriginal youth and adults which was built from the ground up, revealing a different nature of Indigenous suicide and providing information around unique risk factors to suicides.

"We have found that Indigenous suicide is more impulsive and more reactive to interpersonal contact. When you have a group that is so overrepresented in the suicide stats, you need to explore a different set of risk factors but no one had thought to do that.

"Once you explain 'the why' it tells you how to address suicides ("the what") – so if suicides are highly impulsive, we have learnt that teaching distress tolerance skills, anger management, effective communication improves that and eliminates a pretty significant, potential causal pathway to suicide. However, we desperately need to skill up whole communities to run the programs. Ensuring hot spots like the Kimberley, like parts of the NT and far north Queensland have on the ground, local capacity to deliver the programs."

When asked about her thoughts on the impact of racism online particularly within Indigenous communities,

Dr Westerman said social media has amplified the impact of racism online.

"Drones can just be sent in and you can just press a button and don't connect with the human impacts of it. There are more mechanisms and platforms for racism that Aboriginal people need to contend with each day. We have just become accustomed to experiencing dozens of racists comments on a daily basis.

"We are increasingly understanding how racism impacts as trauma – which makes sense as it activates the same flight or fight response that trauma activates. The brain perceives threat and activates this response as a primal survival mechanism.

"Obviously, the more racism you cop the greater likelihood that these trauma responses become enabled and normalised. It's helpful for science to tell us what we instinctually know and experience, because it validates it. Racism has irrefutable psychological impacts informed by science – this then means the debate doesn't have to be an emotional or opinion based one; the evidence speaks for itself."

Dr Westerman explained this is heavily influenced by systematic racism which includes policies that favour human rights restriction based on cultural identity – such as alcohol restrictions and cashless welfare cards.

"For example, there has been a 160 per cent increase in suicide since the NT intervention. Paternalising people and telling them they matter less feeds a core feature of suicides and that is hopeless and helplessness – it's not about the alcohol – it's about the fact that I matter less; I have less human rights because of my skin color."

Dr Westerman noted that raising the age of criminal responsibility is a "no brainer", adding that in many cases there are generationally incarcerated families that make up the bulk of the crime statistics, which effective geompaping of crime data would identify and enable targeted complex prevention measures.

In 2005, the Canadian government sent a delegation to Australia to explore Dr Westerman's work, which resulted in recommendations that the same approaches be adopted for Canadian Aboriginal people (Nunuvut Taskforce, 2006).

With regard to fundraising, the institute are accepting donations via their website and plans are now underway for a highly anticipated annual fundraising concert scheduled for 21st October 2023 at Winthrop Hall – the use of which will be donated by the University of WA for the third year running.

"You can hear a pin drop in the room when you hear (the students) tell their stories. Like me, they represent what is possible for all Aboriginal people who have ever been told they are not smart enough; not good enough for university. They are smashing the glass ceiling every day," said Dr Westerman.

For more information about the Jilya Institute please visit their website.

If you or someone you know is in distress you can call 13YARN or Lifeline on 131114 or visit www.lifeline.com.au.