Australian indigenous suicide rate at "crisis" levels: research

Indigenous suicide rates in Australia are a humanitarian crisis, a report released on Tuesday said.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project (ATSISPEP) is examining current suicide prevention services and programs across the country.

Community consultant Gerry Georgatos said that around Australia "in the last year we've buried an 11-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 13- year-old, a 14-year-old, a 16-year-old, a 17-year-old."

The Northern Territory and Western Australia have some of the highest average wages in the world, but also some of the highest poverty rates, he said.

"What we have in this country, the 12th largest economy on the planet, is an inequity that's not visible in any other country in terms of its disparity," he said.

"Of all middle and high income nations with a recent colonial oppressor history, Australia has the widest divide of its measurable indicators between first peoples and the rest of the nation," he told the Australian Associated Press.

ATSISPEP held a conference in Darwin on Monday and heard that " subtle" assimilation policies were driving extraordinarily high suicide rates of indigenous people.

"The assimilation process so far has failed to the extent that people are taking their own lives because they've been made to feel second-class; they've been made to feel less of a human being than the rest of Australians," a spokeswoman said.

One in 20 indigenous people suicides each year, but ATSISPEP believes it's closer to one in 10 because of under- and mis- reporting of deaths.

A final report will be handed to the federal government later this year. Endi