Spiritual Fatigue A key determinant of health status for Australia’s Indigenous peoples, as Professor Bob Morgan explains. Australia may be envied abroad for its material riches but most Aboriginal people continue to struggle to overcome the ravages of poverty, the contamination of our cultures and traditions, the impacts of dispossession, the alarmingly disproportionate levels of incarceration and the effects of racism and socio-political alienation. All of these elements are determinants that help to understand the debilitating health status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
and the reimagining of purpose and meaning. We must ask ourselves why non-Aboriginal Australia and our political leaders remain unable, or unwilling, to accept this essential truth. They appear to be wedded to another truth, a form of collective cognitive dissonance… and so the suffering continues. When considering chronic disease patterns, Professor Garry Egger explains: ‘It’s a mistake to think that there is a single cause of chronic disease. Instead there’s a ‘hierarchy of causality’. This is shown in the diagram:
In Viktor Frankl’s seminal book Man’s Search for Meaning (1938) on the theory of logotherapy, ● First there is the disease based on his observations from (short list shown here) his time in German concentration ● Then there are ‘risk factors’ or camps, he argued that, “The Professor Bob Morgan, Chair, Board of Aboriginal and markers for these diseases human being is an entity that Torres Strait Islander Education and Research (BATSIER) consists of a body (soma), mind University of Newcastle ● But there are a range of (psyche), and spirit (noos).” He ‘determinants’ (not really ‘causes’ Added to this is the destruction of explained that we have a body and mind, in chronic disease) Aboriginal languages, the contamination but the spirit is what we are, our essence. and/or erosion of culture and traditional ● First, there are the ‘proximal’ Note that Frankl’s theory was not based on values, the destruction of age-old lores (downstream) risk factors, which are religion or theology, but often had parallels that have governed and regulated how closest to the disease (this is one ‘cause’) to these. Aboriginal people lived with each other ● But there are ‘causes’ of these and they In an Aboriginal context I maintain that and with the environment and other forms are ‘medial’ or midstream, Aboriginal people suffer a form of what I of life. It involves a loss of purpose and refer to as ‘Spiritual Fatigue’, a debilitating meaning, all of which can be traced to ● But these also have ‘causes’ and these consequence of having to either constantly various public policy and social attitudes, are called ‘distal’ or the ‘cause of the cause struggle for human rights and freedoms or the net result is the health disparities, of the cause’). And this is where most being forced to constantly defend them. the social inequalities and political analysis usually ends, There is no room for celebration and marginalisation that defines the life of ● But somewhere between the distal meaning in this paradigm - it is simply a Aboriginal people in 21st Australian and other levels of causality are the choice between struggle or defence. society. psychological factors that are important for Spiritual fatigue aligns with Frankl’s The current alarming rates of Aboriginal displaced societies. theory of Logotherapy but it is more incarceration, often the consequence of ● These are meaningless, alienation profound than that. This is due in part poverty and cultural erosion, the appalling and loss of culture and identity, which are because Aboriginal people continue to health inequalities, the ongoing failure profound for Indigenous cultures. suffer transgenerational trauma that forces of the Closing the Gap (CTG) strategy them to deal with a number of effects and numerous other indicators point to CTG – a failed Public Health policy resulting from being disconnected, and in the need for a radical resetting of the way some cases forcibly removed from Country, that Aboriginal needs and aspirations are When viewed through the prism of Aboriginal experience, the notion some of which holds important and sacred identified and responded to. of ‘closing the gap’ implies, perhaps meaning that has been developed over a Increasing evidence-based research unintentionally, that the underlying thousand generations. It is also important illustrates that the greater the involvement causes of the devastating health conditions to understand that when Aboriginal people of Aboriginal people the more connected experienced by most Aboriginal peoples speak of Country this extends beyond mere to Country they are, the greater the are mirrored in non-Aboriginal society, notions of geography. opportunity there is for the practice of lore and therefore Aboriginal inequalities will
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