My Rural Story | Week Eight | Regan Jane Sharp

AUSTRALIA’S RURAL, REMOTE AND INDIGENOUS HEALTH #MyRuralStory

Featuring Interviews from the brand new 3rd edition of Australia’s Rural, Remote and Indigenous Health by Janie Dade Smith

Share your rural experience now to win a copy of the book @ElsevierAUS #MyRuralStory

- Week Eight -

R egan Jane Sharp Community Psychologist working in the field of youth mental health, South East Queensland

ReganJane Sharp

My name is Regan, I’m a community psychologist working in south east Queensland. I was actually born in Darwin and grew up in some remote parts of the Northern Territory. I also spent a lot of time in North Queensland which is where I would call home. I’ve lived in metropolitan areas as well but, I’ve also spent quite a lot of time in regional, rural and remote Australia. Most recently in Western Australia and have done a lot of work throughout the state there. Tell us about your rural and remote LGBTIQ work in Western Australia SowhenIwasworkinginWesternAustralia, I worked as part of an organisation doing

LGBTIQ mental health training. The objective of that training was to try and create better outcomes for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer people in regional and remote parts of the state. The way that we did that was work with mental health workers, psychiatrists, anyone working as part of allied health in those areas to improve their practice standards around working with these populations. We know that these populations are more vulnerable, particularly in non-metropolitan areas because there are rarely LGBTIQ services or applicable resources for people living in non-metropolitan areas. A lot of the work we did there was very

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particularly remote areas, where you need to do that reflection stuff because it’s about understanding who you are, being able to take ownership of who you are, develop who you are, but also, allow yourself to be changed in those settings. What has been one of your best experiences working in these remote communities? Probably all of my best experiences working in rural and remote areas have been situations where I’ve been able to contribute to community and see that change grow and flourish. An example would be doing LGBTIQ mental health work in the Kimberly and the Pilbara regions in Western Australia and seeing communities really struggling to take concepts on and struggle to adjust the way they’ve always done things and then, start to embrace them and get to a point where the whole community has

challenging, but very rewardingaswell and we have seen some very good outcomes in the mental health sector as a result of that. What advice would you give to students going on a rural or remote placement? One of the main things I would like students, particularly those going into rural, remote areas to reflect on would be being open to change. Being open to learning from people around them, particularly non-professionals around them, about their circumstances, about how life is different in rural, regional, remote areas. Part of that is learning how to shut up and listen to other people, observe and take those things on board as opportunities for learning and being able to grow from there. One of the other main things that I think students often benefit from is learning self-reflection. A lot of the time students don’t like to do reflective journals and reflective type practices. But, you’re put in a position when you’re working in, ‘These populations are more vulnerable, particularly in non- metropolitan areas because there are rarely LGBTIQ services or applicable resources’

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grown and met that challenge. That’s incredibly satisfying and rewarding. What have you experienced in remote Australia that has changed your world view? Some of the experiences of rural and remote practice that I’ve learnt the most from, that have altered how I work and how I approach mental health practice in general, have actually not necessarily happened in rural and remote settings, but happened with people from rural and remote areas of Australia. I worked in a custodial setting once in a men’s prison and watching some of the men in that setting who were from very remote parts of Australia. Being in a custodial setting, their grief for their land and their culture really taught me a lot about what their land and their culture meant, how that changed and developed their ideas of who they were and seeing

them connect with other people from their area - there’s no way to duplicate that in a clinical sense from my perspective.

‘It’s about understanding who you are, being able to take ownership of who you are, develop who you are, but also, allow yourself to be changed’ So, that’s really changed how I approach and how I understand culture, how I understand land and what it means for people in Australia. It’s, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, a completely different concept than buying and selling homes and that kind of thing. So, watching people, learning from people about their connection to themselves, their culture, their land, it’sall aboutbeing inthoseareas.

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mangroves and they turned around and said to me ‘too slow, go back’, and they made two of the children, the seven and eight year old come back with us. They made us damper, sitting there in the sun. They were very reluctant about actually doing it because they wanted to be out there with their parents, catching crabs, and they saw these people who had no ideahowto survive in this environment. It gave me a moment to reflect, to actually think, we could sit here with our white skin burning forever and never find our way back and it made me realise just how unimportant the pink formactuallywas. .

I used to say to the Health Workers, it was very important to fill in the pink form in the chart because that helped with the discharge summaries and all of those sorts of things, and to me that was very important, what was written down etc. Then one day the health worker said to me ‘would you like to go hunting, Janie?’ and I had my little daughter who was about four or five at the time. We all jumped in my car with buckets and things, there were 10 of us in a two wheel Suzuki. Off we all went, I had my white shorts on. Going hunting in the mud for crabs out at the beach and as we were walking behind them they were running over these

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Featuring Interviews from the brand new 3rd edition of Australia’s Rural, Remote and Indigenous Health by Janie Dade Smith

Share your rural experience now to win a copy of the book @ElsevierAUS #MyRuralStory Please note, the transcripts featured within this publication have been taken from live interviews. Any alterations have been made for the purpose of clarity and do not change the overall meaning of the speaker.

To find out more about this, and many other local Elsevier titles, visit elsevierhealth.com.au