BY JASMINE MIDDLETON
Content warning: This story contains discussion about Indigenous youth suicide. For help, call Lifeline on 131114.
Concert for Life is so much more than just a cross-discipline musical collaboration: it’s a call to action.
Following its debut success in 2015, the concert returns on World Suicide Prevention Day to raise awareness of the alarming rates of Indigenous youth suicide in remote Australian communities, and fundraise for the Westerman Jilya Institute for Indigenous Mental Health.
The program will feature some much-loved favourites, with Ravel’s Pavane, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and Bizet’s Carmen Suite No. 1, led by Roger Benedict and performed by the Orchestra for Life: the combined forces of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Opera Australia Orchestra, Sydney Children’s Choir, and piano soloist Simon Tedeschi.
The intention is to make a real and lasting impact; all profits go towards the Dr Tracy Westerman Aboriginal Psychology Scholarship Program. In partnership with WA’s Curtin University, the program will result in more training for Indigenous psychologists, and close the gap in delivering much-needed specialist support and further cultural understanding.
Founder Dr Tracy Westerman, 2018 Western Australian of the Year and proud Njamal woman, has made it her life’s work as a psychologist to create opportunities and contribute to research in this field. Her passion for raising awareness and making a difference is the driving force behindConcert for Life.
We chat in depth about this collaboration and why as community it’s so important to strive towards equal access for all Australians.
What can we expect from your upcoming fundraiser, Concert for Life?
We can expect to have an evening that is emotional, uplifting, and educational – perhaps the trifecta of experiences. I really want to take the audience into a journey of compassion and understanding of what lies behind the distressing statistics of child suicides in our remote Indigenous communities.
It is so important that Australia feels personally impacted in a way that they can see themselves as an important part of bringing hope to our most vulnerable communities.
As someone from a background in psychology, how did you find preparing for such an event in collaboration with a wide variety of musicians from around Australia?
I think once you have a common focus and synergy, it becomes quite effortless, as this whole process has been. It is a credit to the desire from Concert for Life to ensure that these issues in our highest risk communities are highlighted, and to audiences that may not have been exposed to these issues before.
It is a fantastic thing to see people come from backgrounds that appear so different coming together for a common and vital cause.
Music can be transformational at times when words do not seem enough; there is so much we know about the healing powers of music for mental health.
How does the concert’s program and initiative reflect the message behind World Suicide Prevention Day?
The concert is all about hope and optimism. Without optimism, we run the risk of suicide and mental health becoming normalised.
When looking at the reality of the statistics, it is understandable that there can be feelings of hopelessness. The concert aims to provide an opportunity for all Australians to come together in solidarity to help in a very practical way.
It hopes to highlight that there is a lot resilience and strength in these communities, but a complete lack of access to the basic resources that every Australian family and child should have an equal right to.
It is so simple what the concert will achieve; it will make a direct and immediate impact, and that is what Australians want. To feel as if they can be a part of something important that can change the lives of our fellow Australians – it is exciting to be a part of it.
What led you to establish the Westerman Jilya Institute for Indigenous Mental Health? What does it involve?
It was born out of frustration more than anything, and I am an eternal optimist so that is not an easy thing to admit!
As a psychologist with over 20 years’ experience in developing significant numbers of evidence-based programs, tools that are amongst the first of their kind, I understand where the gaps are in Indigenous suicide prevention and mental health.
The core is that there is an absence of any Indigenous specific content in the mental health training provided to practitioners across universities throughout Australia. Simply put, the training does not match what practitioners have to face and deal with every day – around 30 per cent of the services are provided to Aboriginal clients.
This means that the training is letting them down significantly. The Jilya Institute, which has only just been incorporated as non-profit, will aim to drive this change and provide access to best practice training via a number of world-first research and training arms. The concert will be the start of finding much needed funding for this to occur.
Why do you believe young Indigenous people in remote areas are more at risk of mental illness and suicide?
Lack of service access is a major factor as noted in coronial and parliamentary inquiries.
The last coroner’s inquest into the deaths of 13 Indigenous children in the Kimberly noted some shocking realities – first, that none of these children had a mental health assessment. This is something that you would expect to be a basic right of all parents and families. Second, that all of these children and their families experienced ‘system failures’, meaning a lack of access to culturally and clinically appropriate services.
Providing more Indigenous psychologists in these areas is such an obvious solution to what has become generational child suicides. It is not over-stating things to say that these scholarships will give us our best opportunity to save lives. When cultural differences are so great between the counsellor and the client, it often can become an impenetrable barrier.
With increasing awareness surrounding mental health and support, what can we do as a community to ensure we provide equal access to all Australians?
The very obvious and easy answer to that is to donate to the scholarship. We want to build an army of Indigenous psychologists across this country to ensure that no more children die as a result of lack of service access.
There is no greater injustice than to be invisible. Unfortunately, the Indigenous suicide statistics are mostly unknown to the general public, and most are not aware of the shocking realities of how young our Indigenous children are taking their own lives.
Having [high rates of child suicide], in a country that enjoys so much advantage and privilege, is something that all Australians need to be more aware of. We are getting there through the power of concerts like this and the power of optimism. Through this, we can really make a difference.
How to you hope to extend this collaboration with musicians and organizations in the future?
My dream is that this concert becomes an annual and national event that all Australians can be a part of […] As Aboriginal Australians, we are mostly invisible on World Suicide Prevention Day. There is already significant interest in making this a reality.
Change always has to be micro before it becomes macro, and I know that this concert has started that process already!
Concert for Life takes place on 10 September, World Suicide Prevention Day, in Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
You can book tickets online or donate on the Australian Cultural Fund campaign.
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Images supplied.
