Died at 25, buried at 75 is the version the statistics don't count. This is the version they do: 8.8 years for men, 8.1 for women.
Disconnection
24
people disconnected from culture, Country or identity, on your read. For our people, belonging, cultural identity and a life with purpose are mental health. Every line below runs through this one.
Mental health
18
carrying high or very high psychological distress right now, at the national rate of 30%, 2.4× non-Indigenous. Mental and substance use disorders are the biggest single cause of the health burden our people carry, and that burden is 2.3× the rest of the country. "I'm fine" on a script is inside that number.
Custody
$149,000
what the system spends over 3 years holding the people this group statistically has in custody, at 2,266 per 100,000 and $305 a day. Money that never reached a program, a job or a family.
Suicide
1 in 19
of our deaths are suicide, against 1 in 59 non-Indigenous. Men at 2.9× the rate, hospital admissions for self-harm at 3×, and the peak is 18 to 44. The prevention pathway starts with identity and belonging, which is where this program starts.
Family violence
6.1×
the health burden from intimate partner violence carried by our women, against non-Indigenous women. Unhealed men and disconnected identity sit under that number, and both are the work.
The ceiling
27
of working age not in a job, at the national rate of 55.7% employed against a Closing the Gap target of 62%. The bigger number is the one nobody measures: how many were taught that the business, the house and the first-class seat aren't for people like us.
None of this is a savings claim. It's the scale of what a connected community holds onto — peace, purpose, years — that a disconnected one hands to the system.
