ARH FUNDS MORE RESEARCH FINDINGS

Healing The Past – How We Can End Intergenerational Trauma in Indigenous Youth

Professor Elizabeth Elliot

AUSTRALIAN Rotary Health has partially funded research in the Bigiswun Kid Project, a longitudinal study that analysed the mental health and wellbeing of Indigenous adolescents living in the remote Fitzroy Valley Aboriginal communities.

In 2018, Professor Elizabeth Elliot from the University of Sydney was awarded an ARH Mental Health Research Grant to lead the Bigiswun Kid Project (‘Bigiswun Kid’ meaning ‘Big One Kid’ or ‘Adolescent’ in the Kimberley Kriol language).

At the request of Aboriginal community leaders, Professor Elliot and her team collaborated with the Marninwarntikura Women’s Resource Centre and Fitzroy Crossing Aboriginal Community-

Controlled Organisation in 2020-21 to conduct the study.

It follows a similar study ten years prior, called the Lililwan Project, now revealing new information on the impacts that high rates of prenatal alcohol exposure, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and early life trauma has had on Indigenous youth.

The Lililwan Project found that 90% of Indigenous youth aged 7-9 experienced early life trauma, with 20% meeting the criteria for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

The Bigiswun Kid Project has followed up with the same cohort of youth, now aged 17-19, finding many self-reporting mental health concerns and or self-harm or suicidal intent. Such findings have