Citation

Lickiss JN. Soc. Sci. Med. 1975; 9(6): 313-318.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1975, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0037-7856(75)90003-7

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Australian people of Aboriginal descent are becoming increasingly urbanized: probably one fifth of the total of 120 000-140 000 live in the capital cities, including at least 12 000 in Sydney. Patterns of ill health are becoming more defined despite difficulties in data collection: at least in the more readily identifiable Aboriginal households, there are trends towards high childhood morbidity (mainly due to infections and trauma), growth retardation and childhood delinquency, together with parental alcohol-related problems. Such patterns are common in situations of stress and social disintegration and an attempt is made to try to discern the major stresses contributing to the Sydney situation. Urbanization involves, for the immigrant from country towns or settlements, a transition into a more impersonal situation where relationships may be fragmented, transactions more complex and the range of everyday options widened to a confusing degree. Culture contact carries its own stress, although colour-based discrimination may be less marked in the city environment than in country towns. Stress associated with residential mobility from country to city and within the city--a notable feature-- may be somewhat buffered by the kinship network existing in the city and the relative paucity of neighbourhood bonds. Value dissonance may contribute to stress: there is apparent dissonance between value systems of past and present Aboriginal society as well as between contemporary urban Aboriginal subcultures and the metropolitan non-Aboriginal subcultures. Such conjectures point to the need for interdisciplinary research.

It is clear that alleviation of the most obvious manifestations of ill health by clinical expertise (available in a culturally accessible situation) should be accompanied by culturally appropriate radical therapy in the form of efforts at community development in order to reverse the underlying cultural disintegration.