Just how one woman, self-described as ‘a kid from the Pilbara’, became the first Aboriginal person in Australia to gain a combined Masters and PhD in Clinical Psychology, is only part of this story.

Written by Westerman as a personal and professional account of her life, the title means ‘my child’ in her Nyamal language.

Jilya is also the name of the Indigenous Institute for Mental Health and charitable foundation she created, providing scholarships supporting Indigenous psychology students who will then work in Indigenous communities. The institute aims to end suicide, build resilience and strengthen wellbeing in Indigenous Australians.

There are now 41 students being supported at Australian universities by the Westerman Jilya scholarships after she funded the first one in 2019 and has worked to gain generous donations from corporations and individuals ever since. She wants a future free of generational child suicides that have plagued Aboriginal communities.

Her book sets out in clear, almost clinical terms, why it is that Indigenous psychologists are needed in Aboriginal communities. Her private psychology practice challenges the way the mental health profession responds to cultural difference, as she has met too many grieving, bewildered parents of child suicides.

Her client stories reveal trauma and heartbreak, but also hope and optimism. Troubled by the high rate of suicides, particularly among children and teenagers, her PhD established for the first time that there were different risk factors for Indigenous suicide. Communities knew this, but non-Indigenous people were being trained to look for the wrong indicators. So she created the Westerman Aboriginal Symptom Checklist (WASC), one for youth and another for adults.

More than 50 000 practitioners across Australia have now been accredited in those tools, but there has been no government support or ongoing validation. This, says Westerman, shows how entrenched systemic racism remains, and she has now started to talk about it publicly.

And talk she can. Dr Westerman has been a keynote speaker at more than 100 national conferences, as well as in Canada, the USA and New Zealand. In 2005 the Canadian Government sent a delegation to Australia to explore her innovative approaches to Aboriginal suicide prevention and mental health, resulting in recommendations that the same approach be adopted for Indigneous Canadian people.

There is a lot to learn from her, but she sees her status as a WA Australian of the Year, WA Telstra Business Award winner and the recipient of an Order of Australia as simply representational and aspirational for other Aboriginal people. As Westerman writes: You cannot be what you cannot see.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Tracy Westerman AM is a proud Nyamal woman from the Pilbara region of Western Australia and long been considered a critical thought leader in Aboriginal mental health, suicide prevention and cultural competency.

In 2003, she became the first Aboriginal person to complete a combined Masters & PhD in Clinical Psychology. She holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology, a master’s degree in clinical psychology and Doctor of Philosophy (Clinical Psychology).

This is despite coming from a background of disadvantage and one in which she had to undertake most of her tertiary entrance subjects by Distance Education.

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