Conceptualising Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara mental health beliefs

ABSTRACT

Objectives

Very little is known about how Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara describe and explain mental health from their own perspectives without resorting to Western frameworks. This study used a social contextual research approach to describe how Anangu talk about behaviours that are called “mental illness” in Western contexts, their explanations about the contexts they believe shape these behaviours, and how Anangu support people who exhibit them.

Method

Seven senior Anangu were repeat interviewed between 1–2 hours by an Anangu researcher for a combined total time of 31 hours in a “yarning” conversational approach. Interviews were analysed using a thematic analysis approach to explore the contextual features giving rise to mental health behaviours.

Results

Results indicated that in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands there are complex interactions between fundamental ancient beliefs of cultural processes and the changing Western influences since colonisation, and examples are given of each of these. The same looking Western behaviours of “mental health” could arise from alternative traditional contexts.

Conclusions

This research fills a gap and adds to the very small amount of Anangu mental health literature by providing an extensive overview of the mental health behaviours from the perspectives of Anangu themselves. It also shows how there can be gaps in research done without Indigenous researchers onboard.

Key Points

What is already known about this topic:

1. Indigenous descriptions and explanations for the behaviours of ‘mental health’ differ from western versions.

2. Previous research has usually not involved Indigenous researchers.

3. Previous research often does not let Indigenous peoples provide context for their descriptions and explanations.

What this topic adds:

1. Anangu elders added rich contexts to their descriptions and explanations for the behaviours of ‘mental health’ rather than generalizations.

2. Having an Anangu researcher vastly improved the details given compared to a previous research study that did not.

3. Anangu elders kept western and Anangu contexts separate even with behaviours that superficially looked the same.

KEYWORDS:

• Australian Aboriginal mental health
• Anangu
• naming mental health behaviours
• traditional interventions
• ngangkari

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Kaurna people as the traditional custodians of the lands where this research was conceived and written, and both the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara language groups of the APY lands where the data was collected, and pay our respects to all our Elders past, present, and emerging. Dom also wishes to thank his two Anangu mentors during the research, and all the participants, who were willing to share intimate aspects of Anangu ways of being. The wisdom we have learnt from each of you, we will carry forever, and pass on.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of the research and due to ethical concerns, supporting data is not available. Reasonable requests for more information will be considered.