From Deficit to Strength-Based Aboriginal Health Research—Moving toward Flourishing

Aboriginal Australians have a fundamental human right to opportunities that lead to healthy and flourishing lives. While the impact of trauma on Aboriginal Australians is well-documented, a pervasive deficit narrative that focuses on problems and pathology persists in research and policy discourse....

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Autores principales: Bullen, Jonathan, Hill-Wall, Trish, Anderson, Kate, Brown, Alex, Bracknell, Clint, Newnham, Elizabeth A., Garvey, Gail, Waters, Lea
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10094537/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37048008
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20075395
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author Bullen, Jonathan
Hill-Wall, Trish
Anderson, Kate
Brown, Alex
Bracknell, Clint
Newnham, Elizabeth A.
Garvey, Gail
Waters, Lea
author_facet Bullen, Jonathan
Hill-Wall, Trish
Anderson, Kate
Brown, Alex
Bracknell, Clint
Newnham, Elizabeth A.
Garvey, Gail
Waters, Lea
author_sort Bullen, Jonathan
collection PubMed
description Aboriginal Australians have a fundamental human right to opportunities that lead to healthy and flourishing lives. While the impact of trauma on Aboriginal Australians is well-documented, a pervasive deficit narrative that focuses on problems and pathology persists in research and policy discourse. This narrative risks further exacerbating Aboriginal disadvantage through a focus on ‘fixing what is wrong’ with Aboriginal Australians and the internalising of these narratives by Aboriginal Australians. While a growing body of research adopts strength-based models, limited research has sought to explore Aboriginal flourishing. This conceptual paper seeks to contribute to a burgeoning paradigm shift in Aboriginal research, seeking to understand what can be learned from Aboriginal people who flourish, how we best determine this, and in what contexts this can be impactful. Within, we argue the case for a new approach to exploring Aboriginal wellbeing that integrates salutogenic, positive psychology concepts with complex systems theory to understand and promote Aboriginal wellbeing and flourishing. While deeper work may be required to establish the parameters of a strength-based, culturally aligned Aboriginal conceptualisation of positive psychology, we suggest the integration of Aboriginal and Western methodologies offers a unique and potent means of shifting the dial on seemingly intractable problems.
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spelling pubmed-100945372023-04-13 From Deficit to Strength-Based Aboriginal Health Research—Moving toward Flourishing Bullen, Jonathan Hill-Wall, Trish Anderson, Kate Brown, Alex Bracknell, Clint Newnham, Elizabeth A. Garvey, Gail Waters, Lea Int J Environ Res Public Health Review Aboriginal Australians have a fundamental human right to opportunities that lead to healthy and flourishing lives. While the impact of trauma on Aboriginal Australians is well-documented, a pervasive deficit narrative that focuses on problems and pathology persists in research and policy discourse. This narrative risks further exacerbating Aboriginal disadvantage through a focus on ‘fixing what is wrong’ with Aboriginal Australians and the internalising of these narratives by Aboriginal Australians. While a growing body of research adopts strength-based models, limited research has sought to explore Aboriginal flourishing. This conceptual paper seeks to contribute to a burgeoning paradigm shift in Aboriginal research, seeking to understand what can be learned from Aboriginal people who flourish, how we best determine this, and in what contexts this can be impactful. Within, we argue the case for a new approach to exploring Aboriginal wellbeing that integrates salutogenic, positive psychology concepts with complex systems theory to understand and promote Aboriginal wellbeing and flourishing. While deeper work may be required to establish the parameters of a strength-based, culturally aligned Aboriginal conceptualisation of positive psychology, we suggest the integration of Aboriginal and Western methodologies offers a unique and potent means of shifting the dial on seemingly intractable problems. MDPI 2023-04-04 /pmc/articles/PMC10094537/ /pubmed/37048008 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20075395 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Bullen, Jonathan
Hill-Wall, Trish
Anderson, Kate
Brown, Alex
Bracknell, Clint
Newnham, Elizabeth A.
Garvey, Gail
Waters, Lea
From Deficit to Strength-Based Aboriginal Health Research—Moving toward Flourishing
title From Deficit to Strength-Based Aboriginal Health Research—Moving toward Flourishing
title_full From Deficit to Strength-Based Aboriginal Health Research—Moving toward Flourishing
title_fullStr From Deficit to Strength-Based Aboriginal Health Research—Moving toward Flourishing
title_full_unstemmed From Deficit to Strength-Based Aboriginal Health Research—Moving toward Flourishing
title_short From Deficit to Strength-Based Aboriginal Health Research—Moving toward Flourishing
title_sort from deficit to strength-based aboriginal health research—moving toward flourishing
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10094537/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37048008
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20075395
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