PSY5012 · Advocates in Indigenous health and wellbeing

Overview

In this unit, you will have the opportunity to develop practical skills required to improve Indigenous mental health equity and cultural safety in healthcare. Based on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Curriculum Framework, you will undertake five modules covering the domains of respect, reflection, communication, safety and quality, and advocacy. You will learn the importance of cultural humility, how culture relates to wellbeing and how worldview influences in guiding thoughts, feelings and behaviours. The unit facilitates your understanding of the impacts of implicit bias, stigma and racism and the influence of your own culture when working with culturally diverse others. Such an understanding provides the context for self-reflective practice, cultivating respect in order to relate to clients as a whole person, rather than merely focusing on symptoms and diagnosis of disorders. You will learn to integrate an awareness of lived experiences, and how to communicate in a culturally safe manner. Grounded in a strengths-based approach, you will learn to apply principles from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Psychology, as well as other the psychology of indigenous peoples.

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

Learning outcomes

1. Respect: Reflect on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ and other indigenous peoples’ ways of knowing, being and doing, in the context of history, culture and diversity.
2. Reflection: Analyse how one’s own culture and dominant cultural paradigms influence perceptions of and interactions with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other indigenous peoples.
3. Communication: Examine culturally appropriate, safe and sensitive communication that facilitates trust and builds respectful relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other indigenous peoples.
4. Safety and Quality: Reflect and apply evidence and strength-based best practice approaches in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and other indigenous peoples mental health and wellbeing.
5. Advocacy: Demonstrate advocacy for equitable outcomes and social justice in regard to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and other indigenous peoples mental health and wellbeing.
6. Demonstrate adaptability in interpersonal communication, rapport building and empathic responding for cultural responsiveness and reflexivity in mental health care.

Workload

You should expect to spend 20-24 hours per week on this unit to achieve the learning outcomes: • 5-6 hours Learning Journeys • 4-5 hours readings or activities • 7-8 hours skills-based assessment tasks Each week there will be an optional Zoom session.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.