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From Digital Mental Health to Digital Social and Emotional Wellbeing: How Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research Influenced the Australian Government’s Digital Mental Health Agenda

This paper describes the first six years of a government-initiated project to train Indigenous health professionals in digital mental health (d-MH). It illustrates how community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods were used to enable this “top-down” project to be transformed into a ‘ground-u...

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Autores principales: Bennett-Levy, James, Singer, Judy, Rotumah, Darlene, Bernays, Sarah, Edwards, David
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8467479/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34574678
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18189757
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author Bennett-Levy, James
Singer, Judy
Rotumah, Darlene
Bernays, Sarah
Edwards, David
author_facet Bennett-Levy, James
Singer, Judy
Rotumah, Darlene
Bernays, Sarah
Edwards, David
author_sort Bennett-Levy, James
collection PubMed
description This paper describes the first six years of a government-initiated project to train Indigenous health professionals in digital mental health (d-MH). It illustrates how community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods were used to enable this “top-down” project to be transformed into a ‘ground-up’ community-guided process; and how, in turn, the guidance from the local Indigenous community partners went on to influence the national government’s d-MH agenda. The CBPR partnership between five community partners and a university rural health department is described, with illustrations of how CBPR harnessed the community’s voice in making the project relevant to their wellbeing needs. The local Indigenous community’s involvement led to a number of unexpected outcomes, which impacted locally and nationally. At an early stage, the conceptual framework of the project was changed from d-MH to the culturally-relevant Indigenous framework of digital social and emotional wellbeing (d-SEWB). This led to a significant expansion of the range and type of digital resources; and to other notable outcomes such as successful advocacy for an Aboriginal-specific online therapy program and for a dedicated “one-stop-shop” d-SEWB website, Wellmob, which was funded by the Australian government in 2019–2021. Some of the implications of this project for future Indigenous CBPR projects are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-84674792021-09-27 From Digital Mental Health to Digital Social and Emotional Wellbeing: How Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research Influenced the Australian Government’s Digital Mental Health Agenda Bennett-Levy, James Singer, Judy Rotumah, Darlene Bernays, Sarah Edwards, David Int J Environ Res Public Health Article This paper describes the first six years of a government-initiated project to train Indigenous health professionals in digital mental health (d-MH). It illustrates how community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods were used to enable this “top-down” project to be transformed into a ‘ground-up’ community-guided process; and how, in turn, the guidance from the local Indigenous community partners went on to influence the national government’s d-MH agenda. The CBPR partnership between five community partners and a university rural health department is described, with illustrations of how CBPR harnessed the community’s voice in making the project relevant to their wellbeing needs. The local Indigenous community’s involvement led to a number of unexpected outcomes, which impacted locally and nationally. At an early stage, the conceptual framework of the project was changed from d-MH to the culturally-relevant Indigenous framework of digital social and emotional wellbeing (d-SEWB). This led to a significant expansion of the range and type of digital resources; and to other notable outcomes such as successful advocacy for an Aboriginal-specific online therapy program and for a dedicated “one-stop-shop” d-SEWB website, Wellmob, which was funded by the Australian government in 2019–2021. Some of the implications of this project for future Indigenous CBPR projects are discussed. MDPI 2021-09-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8467479/ /pubmed/34574678 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18189757 Text en © 2021 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 Article
Bennett-Levy, James
Singer, Judy
Rotumah, Darlene
Bernays, Sarah
Edwards, David
From Digital Mental Health to Digital Social and Emotional Wellbeing: How Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research Influenced the Australian Government’s Digital Mental Health Agenda
title From Digital Mental Health to Digital Social and Emotional Wellbeing: How Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research Influenced the Australian Government’s Digital Mental Health Agenda
title_full From Digital Mental Health to Digital Social and Emotional Wellbeing: How Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research Influenced the Australian Government’s Digital Mental Health Agenda
title_fullStr From Digital Mental Health to Digital Social and Emotional Wellbeing: How Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research Influenced the Australian Government’s Digital Mental Health Agenda
title_full_unstemmed From Digital Mental Health to Digital Social and Emotional Wellbeing: How Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research Influenced the Australian Government’s Digital Mental Health Agenda
title_short From Digital Mental Health to Digital Social and Emotional Wellbeing: How Indigenous Community-Based Participatory Research Influenced the Australian Government’s Digital Mental Health Agenda
title_sort from digital mental health to digital social and emotional wellbeing: how indigenous community-based participatory research influenced the australian government’s digital mental health agenda
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8467479/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34574678
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18189757
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