[Trigger warning suicide, domestic abuse] Indigenous Australian women hospitalised for assault at 80 times the rate of other women, suicides at record high

GIRLS as young as 11 are committing suicide at an unprecedented rate in Northern Territory indigenous communities where family violence is rife. Dr Howard Bath, the territory’s outspoken Children’s Commissioner, told The Saturday Age this week that girls now account for a previously unheard of 40 per cent of all suicides of children under the age of 17.

The increase in young female suicides coincides with an epidemic of marijuana use and a staggering rise in the number of territory Aboriginal women being admitted to hospital as a result of violence.

“Aboriginal women are being hospitalised for assault at 80 times the rate of other women. It beggars belief.” said Dr Bath. ”Exposure to violence greatly increases the risk of a person taking their life.”

Describing the level of violence against women as “horrific”, Dr Bath said he believed the proportion of indigenous girls committing suicide in the territory was now the highest in the Western world.
 

(Source: theage.com.au)