Module 3: Wellbeing Flashcards
Describe how we might represent wellbeing as a shift from amelioration towards transforming change
More widely accepted dominant discourse
- Whole person, rather than a split between mental and physical
- Thriving rather than simple avoiding negative outcomes
- Resilience in the face of adversity
- A focus on the present and the future
- Considers context
Describe self-determination theory
- Autonomy
○ The need for individuals to experience a sense of control and violation over their actions and environment - Mastery
○ The need for individuals to feel effective and capable in their activities and pursuits
§ Feeling connected to the activity you are doing - Relatedness
○ The need for individuals to feel connected and cared for by others, and to have a sense of belonging and social support
- If you have these 3 things you probably have a good sense of being well
Describe subjective models of wellbeing
Subjective wellbeing (individual -what does it feel like to be well, involves stepping back and looking at the bigger picture e.g. how your life is progressing - May require you to place yourself on a scale - can be turned into data)
- Evaluative or cognitive wellbeing
- Hedonic or affective wellbeing
○ Presence of positive emotions in life
○ How are they feeling in the moment
○ Emotional labelling
- Eudaimonic wellbeing
○ Core psychological needs
Self determination
Describe objective models of wellbeing
Objective wellbeing (what circumstances give rise to wellbeing)
○ A needs or rights-based approach
○ Includes aspects such as material living standards, health, education, safety and social connectedness
What is meant by ‘Indigenous Knowledges’?
- How does psychology deny these ways of being human
- The dominant Western approach to psychology is premised on the cultural frame of individualism, which decontextualises
○ She is talk about what we know as the ecological model - Nelson and Prilleltensky
○ Psychology in trying to be scientific, claimed to be objective and apolitical
§ Presents this view that all cultures can be viewed through the same psychological frame eliminates or diminish cultures that might not fit into the frame
E.g. study of mental illness in Eskimos (indigenous people) in Canada and Greenland
§ Piblokto - temporary insanity in which the highland Eskimos are subject
§ More likely to have these attacks during periods of darkness
§ “He seemed possessed of supernatural strength
§ Unique culturally specific disorder
§ Initial desperation to fit this into common objective ‘apolitical frame’ - e.g. they thought it was a deficit of calcium (proven it wasn’t )
Found eskimo society is so different to western society that Eskimos have a completely different ‘psychic structure’ and handle stress in different ways
What is cultural governance?
Cultural governance = self -determination
Have the capacity to run their own communities according to their own cultures and customs
What is cultural continuity
Cultural continuity - life is somehow continuous in time you have an idea of who you are now and who you will be in the future in both individual and societal level. Something persisting in time despite of change
Describe social justice in the process of colonisation
- There cannot be any reconciliation or decolonization to a position of injustice, that is, to accept and collaborate in an ongoing state of inequality, oppression, marginalization, poverty and powerlessness
○ Social justice must always be considered from a perspective that is grounded in the daily lives of Indigenous Australians. Social justice is what faces you in the morning. It is awaking in a house with an adequate water supply, cooking facilities and sanitation. It is the ability to nourish your children and send them to a school where their education not only equips them for employment but also reinforces their knowledge and appreciation of their cultural inheritance. It is the prospect of genuine employment and good health; a life of choices and opportunities, free from discrimination. (p. 22)- Social justice means that the history of our nations is recognised, and within this, the political and cultural oppression of Indigenous people is acknowledged
Describe Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander models of Social and Emotional wellbeing
- There is still a role for non-Aboriginal people to play and its more than ‘listening’
○ People aren’t willing to take risks and fail
○ “If I’m fearing saying or doing the wrong thing, who is that serving?” - Acknowledge how far you have come
- Remember co-liberation and discover the joy of being wrong
- Decolonise yourself with art, literature and story
- Celebrate, acknowledge and enjoy allyship
Describe communities understanding of wellbeing
- Interested (to the community)
- May or may not be written (e.g. spiritual, bodily)
- Variable, always changing and historical
Cannot necessarily be aggregated or standardised
Describe society’s understanding of wellbeing
- Interested
- Written (verbal or numerical, documented)
- Static
- Aggregated/can be aggregated
Standardised
Describe wellbeing as a discourse from a societal/governmental perspective
- Government wellbeing only measure things they are interested in, can be written down, static
- Going to have to reduce wellbeing to something that makes sense within the governments way of seeing and framing the world (simplifying)
As Behavioural Scientists we have more of a say in the way things get excluded, best possible compromise
Describe the Recognition Space
- Somewhere between this complex lived 3D reality of indigenous people and the way the government has these frameworks of measures around wellbeing is that there is a bit of an overlap
- Exploring Indigenous communities’ GDP isn’t a good enough reflection of their importance - something like wellbeing can place more importance on cultural significance
- Some overlap between discourses
- How do we get the complexity into something that is visible in government
○ Have the questions on a scale but in terms of Yawuru context
○ Still something that are lost in this model
○ Liayan includes individual, relational and collective wellbeing
○ Captures one of the main intentions of community psychology - can those ways of knowing and being which are local, contextual, historical and embodied be reconciled with the fact that our society is mostly organised in terms of bureaucracies and hierarchies that operate through systems of order and control that rely on measurement, standardisation and aggregation to get things done
○ Is wellbeing a genuine opportunity for transformative change or is it the smiling face of colonialism that aims to simplify and control everything?
