Ruth

Good morning beautiful Twitter followers! Due to your amazing efforts we have received $19k in donations yesterday and today to go towards starting the first national Indigenous Psychology Assessment and Treatment Centre. I cannot thank you enough. It’s very clearly vastly come from Twitter. Keep going folks! thejilyainstitute.com.au/cli…

In 2019, 13 Aboriginal young ppl died by suicide in the Kimberley without a mental health assessment. In 2016 I presented my unique screening tools to a senate inquiry into Indigenous suicides which were cited by Canadian Govt as best practice in 2005., 2019 and which, at that stage had over 30,000 practitioners across Australia accredited in their use. The Govt made no recommendations around their use or implementation. I again presented the tools to the full cabinet in 2019. No recommendations around their use. We have NO data on Indigenous mental health or suicide risk in this entire country - this is hard to say out loud -when we have a child suicide rate SIX times that of non Indigenous children. We have just submitted for publication the FIRST data on Indigenous youth (N=1266) all SELF FUNDED. I will also digitise these tools in a few weeks so we can capture data in real time for the FIRST time across Australia. Remember government have done NONE of this. We now have 41 Indigenous psych students funded through public donations & personal fundraising efforts. Never again will a child die from suicide due to a lack of access to services on my watch. We are doing the work of giants. And I am so proud of that ♥️🖤🖤 The Westerman Jilya Institute for Indigenous Mental Health You can help by donating today lnkd.in/grTz9QQ