My Rural Story | Week Eight | Regan Jane Sharp

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.

@ElsevierAUS