Mentoring programs for indigenous youth at-risk

There is a range of risk factors that may make young people of any ethnicity more likely to engage in antisocial behaviours. These factors include the young person’s own attitudes; relationships within the family; and growing up in communities where there is widespread violence, alcohol and other substance abuse, poverty, poor health and poor-quality housing. Indigenous young people face the additional challenges ofdispossession, discontinuity of culture and intergenerational trauma.A strong connection to culture—coupled with high self-esteem, a strong sense of autonomy, and with living in cohesive, functioning families and communities—can be protective factors that result in Indigenous young people choosing productive life pathways.Mentoring is a relationship intervention strategy that can assist in building some of these protective factors. A growing body of research demonstrates that mentoring can have powerful and lasting positive effects in improving behavioural, academic and vocational outcomes for at-risk youth and, to a more limited extent, in reducing contact with juvenile justice systems.In an Indigenous context, mentoring is a particularly promising initiative because it fits well with Indigenous teaching and learning styles and can help to build strong collective ties within a community.Mentoring programs can involve adult or peer mentors and can be implemented in a range of ways, such as one-on-one or in groups.Although positive results can be achieved with single-intervention mentoring for at risk youth, integrating mentoring into broader programs produces a greater level of positive change.The way the mentoring program is run and the nature of the relationship between mentor and mentee are crucial in determining the outcomes of youth mentoring programs.

Body image importance and body dissatisfaction among Indigenous Australian adolescents

Despite their elevated risk of health problems and a propensity to be more overweight or underweight relative to the other members of the Australian population, there has been no previous investigation of body image concerns among Indigenous Australians. In this study we investigated the level of body image importance and body image dissatisfaction among 19 rural Indigenous adolescents (7 males, 12 females) and 28 urban Indigenous adolescents (15 males and 13 females). Our hypotheses that there would be gender differences in body image importance and body image satisfaction were not generally supported. However, males placed more importance on muscle size and strength than females, and rural participants placed more importance on weight than urban participants. Comparison to existing data obtained from Caucasian adolescents suggested that Indigenous youth may be less concerned and dissatisfied with body weight and shape. These results are discussed in relation to findings from studies of non-Indigenous adolescents, and Indigenous health issues. The limitations of the current study and the need for further studies are also discussed.