Indigenous communities facing fatal health crisis: Productivity Commission report

Rates of violence and self-harm among Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders have reached worrying highs. WATCH THE PANEL DISCUSSION.

Aboriginal Australians are suffering rising rates of suicide, self-harm and violence, a damning new report reveals.

One in every 16 Indigenous children has been taken from their parents, with rates of foster care nearly tripling over the past 15 years to 6 per cent of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

One in three adults suffers from high rates of psychological distress – double the rate for other Australians.

Aboriginal Australians are suffering rising rates of suicide, self-harm and violence, a damning new Productivity Commission report reveals.

The shocking findings will be revealed today by the Productivity Commission, in a new report card on the wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

Indigenous teenagers are 22 times more likely than other teens to be in jail, and the adult imprisonment rate has soared 72 per cent since 2000.

One in six Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders reported being a victim of physical or threatened harm in 2018/19 – three times the assault rate for other Australians.

Indigenous Australians are twice as likely as other Australians to take their own lives, with suicide rates rising by 40 per cent in a decade.

The report says reasons include “intergenerational trauma attributable to colonisation and dispossession, exposure to multiple and cumulative life stressors, higher levels of psychological distress, exposure to suicide of other family members, poorer access to mental health services … higher rates of alcohol use, and the use of illicit substances’’.