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This research aimed to gain an understanding of the acute mental health inpatient experience as described by Aboriginal women during admission. It recorded for the first time the words of Aboriginal women within the inpatient unit, including their perceptions of factors which may promote or impede a culturally safe environment. Eleven Aboriginal women inpatients gave interviews before discharge from the inpatient unit. Five Aboriginal Reference Group (ARG) members with experience of the inpatient unit also gave interviews, adding 'insider–outsider' perspectives. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, entered into NVivo software, and analysed inductively to raise codes and develop themes. Five interconnecting themes emerged: Social Context: life experience preceding, shaping, and following admission; Connection: with kin, community, and culture. Control: self‐determination, legally and physically curtailed; Caring: actions promoting reconnection and self‐determination; Communication: conveying caring and supporting agency, reconnection, and return to community. Findings reflected inpatient issues reported in previous studies, adding insights into the cultural concerns of Aboriginal women and offering practical clinical implications for culturally secure service delivery in an inpatient setting. Existing literature offered a basis for developing the model offered here for transcultural interaction for recovery in an inpatient setting. Attention to these findings can enhance Aboriginal women's inpatient experience and promote further research. The article complies with the COREQ‐32 checklist for describing qualitative studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental health practitioners struggle to translate recovery paradigms into practice. Changing from a focus on remediation of symptoms to a focus on reclaiming life in the community and enhancing protective factors requires a new approach. One new approach that particularly challenges health providers is the equalising of traditional patient-service provider relationships. Given the additional issues of disempowerment and social disadvantage of Indigenous peoples in Australia, equalising relationships and embedding recovery values for Indigenous mental health clients especially require urgent attention. There is also a need to learn more about the meaning of recovery in the Indigenous context and the ways in which it differs from non Indigenous interpretations. The Aboriginal and Islander Mental health initiative (previously the Australian Integrated Mental health initiative) has developed resources and training which seek to address this gap. The resources support a culturally adapted strengths-based approach to assessment and early intervention and are increasing popular in mental health, alcohol and other drug and chronic disease settings. Indigenous people with mental illness are subject to additional complex and toxic combination of social disconnecting factors. Culturally adapted recovery approaches to Indigenous mental illness are thus an important component of closing the gap in Indigenous health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To develop and evaluate a culturally adapted brief intervention for Indigenous people with chronic mental illness. Design: A mixed methods design in which an exploratory phase of qualitative research was followed by a nested randomised controlled trial. Setting: Psycho-education resources and a brief intervention, motivational care planning (MCP), were developed and tested in collaboration with aboriginal mental health workers in three remote communities in northern Australia. Participants: A total of 49 patients with mental illness and 37 carers were recruited to a randomised controlled trial that compared MCP (n = 24) with a clinical control condition (treatment as usual, n = 25). Intervention: The early treatment group received MCP at baseline and the late treatment group received delayed treatment at six months. Main outcome measures: The primary outcome was mental health problem severity as measured by the health of the nation outcome scales. Secondary measures of well-being (Kessler 10), life skills, self-management and substance dependence were chosen. Outcome assessments were performed at baseline, six-month, 12-month and 18-month follow up. Results: Random effects regression analyses showed significant advantage for the treatment condition in terms of well-being with changes in health of the nation outcome scales (P < 0.001) and Kessler 10 (P = 0.001), which were sustained over time. There was also significant advantage for treatment for alcohol dependence (P = 0.05), with response also evident in cannabis dependence (P = 0.064) and with changes in substance dependence sustained over time. Conclusions: These results suggest that MCP is an effective treatment for Indigenous people with mental illness and provide insight into the experience of mental illness in remote communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians experience high rates of mental illness and psychological distress compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts. E-mental health tools offer an opportunity for accessible, effective, and acceptable treatment. The AIMhi Stay Strong app and the ibobbly suicide prevention app are treatment tools designed to combat the disproportionately high levels of mental illness and stress experienced within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.Objective: This study aimed to explore Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members' experiences of using two culturally responsive e-mental health apps and identify factors that influence the acceptability of these approaches.Methods: Using qualitative methods aligned with a phenomenological approach, we explored the acceptability of two culturally responsive e-mental health apps through a series of three 3-hour focus groups with nine Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members. Thematic analysis was conducted and coresearcher and member checking were used to verify findings.Results: Findings suggest strong support for the concept of e-mental health apps and optimism for their potential. Factors that influenced acceptability related to three key themes: personal factors (eg, motivation, severity and awareness of illness, technological competence, and literacy and language differences), environmental factors (eg, community awareness, stigma, and availability of support), and app characteristics (eg, ease of use, content, graphics, access, and security and information sharing). Specific adaptations, such as local production, culturally relevant content and graphics, a purposeful journey, clear navigation, meaningful language, options to assist people with language differences, offline use, and password protection may aid uptake.Conclusions: When designed to meet the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, e-mental health tools add an important element to public health approaches for improving the well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Australian Indigenous peoples in remote and rural settings continue to have limited access to treatment for mental illness. Comorbid disorders complicate presentations in primary care where Indigenous youths and perinatal women are at particular risk. Despite this high comorbidity there are few examples of successful models of integrated treatment. This paper outlines these challenges and provides recommendations for practice that derive from recent developments in the Northern Territory. Conclusions: There is a strong need to develop evidence for the effectiveness of integrated and culturally informed individual and service level interventions. We describe the Best practice in Early intervention Assessment and Treatment of depression and substance misuse study which seeks to address this need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]