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An American/Australian’s Observations: Wellness in Australia Compared to the
United States (April 2013) (/blogpost/922994/161967/An-American-Australian-s-
Observations-Wellness-in-Australia-Compared-to-the-United-States-April-2013)
Posted By NWI, Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Updated: Tuesday, April 2, 2013
By John W. Travis, MD, MPH
My Background
Like some other early wellness doctors, Halbert Dunn and Bill Hettler, I was born in
Ohio. With that birthright, I got my early modeling of wellness from the 2,500
people of Bluffton, Ohio, in the 1940s. After completing my MD in Boston in the
’60s, a preventive medicine residency at Johns Hopkins, I opened the first wellness
center in the United States in 1975. Since 2000, I’ve lived more than half of each
year in Australia—becoming a dual citizen in 2005. I firmly believe that the
currency of wellness is connection. I came upon this belief because I didn’t
experience the birthright of mammalian-programmed connection with my parents
(Elaine Sullivan taught me early on that our gifts come from our wounds). This
wasn’t unusual. Normative abuse practices of Western culture were just becoming
popular in those days: hospital births and the separations promulgated by Dr.
Spock—sleeping alone in cribs, four-hour bottle feedings, playpens, baby
carriages, and circumcision. At least Spock reversed himself on circumcision before
he died!
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However, some of this disconnection was made up for during my formative years
in Bluffton, just before television destroyed so much of the social capital that was
created through the many meetings and projects a small-town culture fostered.
These were ice cream socials on Thursday nights in the summer when Church
Street was closed off and we all sat around eating and talking. Many groups met in
the evenings, from purely social gatherings like bridge clubs (which always meant
treats afterward when it was at our house), to service projects with the Scouts or
Lions Club. Judd Allen gave me a copy of Bowling Alone years ago, which
documents this massive loss of social capital and hence a lowering of societal
wellness. I lament this loss and, having experienced it as a child, am committed to
reestablishing it.
Much of my work in infant wellness, beginning in the early ’90s, was inspired
through healing my own wounds, thus you know my bias. If we teach what we
need to learn, it’s no accident my career has been in wellness.
Perhaps because of my small-town roots, for the past eight years I’ve chosen to
live for part of each year in a very progressive small town on the eastern-most tip
of the Australian continent—Mullumbimby, New South Wales (near Byron Bay).
Here there is a level of self-awareness and ecological concern similar to many
places in Northern California, so my observations are doubtless skewed from what
I’d likely see in more conservative areas of Australia.
Comparison of the United States and Australia
So how is it different in Australia? Using categories from my Wellness Wheel as a
framework, I’d say in many ways it’s both different and, yet, not that different.
 
 
Self-responsibility and love
Self-responsibility in government is evident in Byron Shire (the "county” I live in)
because the elected councilors are largely Green Party members, and a growing
constituency of Greens is now found in state and federal parliaments. (Australia’s
electoral system allows voters to rank candidates so that casting a vote for a
lesser known candidate does not weaken the chances of a favored major party’s
win, like it does in the United States.) I laud Kevin Rudd, the leader of the Labor
Party that swept into power a year before the United States elected Obama. As
Prime Minister, one of his first acts was to apologize to the original peoples of the
land for the atrocities of the invasion in a nationally televised event watched by
millions in February 2008.
One difference does stand out, though. Australia protects infant boys from the
surgical removal of three-fourths of the most sensitive tissue on their body—done
without effective anesthesia. Though once similar to the U.S. circumcision rates of
nearly 80%, Australia’s infant circumcision rates plummeted in the 1970s. Now, like
all the other Anglophone countries, except the United States, it remains under 15%.
The U.S. rate is still over 50%, but dropping rapidly.
This brutal, unnecessary genital modification remains one of the largest human
rights violations on the planet—yet, being a $2 billion/year industry in United
States, it’s hard to stop. Unfortunately, the decision to cease this practice in
Australia was due to financial reasons, when their respective national health
services were established, as did the Unite Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, and
South Africa. Australia gets my kudos, but I’d be more enthusiastic had it resulted
from public awareness and an outcry over the misinformation that has been
touted since the late 1800s when circumcision was promoted to discourage
masturbation.
Another example is Transition Towns and the shift to local economies (see the
award-winning documentary "The Economics of Happiness,” downloadable from
TheEconomicsofHappiness.org for a small fee). I’m proud to say it was produced by
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Helena Norberg-Hodge, a Mullumbimby resident (also a friend of Prince Charles). I
recently offered a workshop at her second international conference—connecting
corporate dysfunction with decreasing infant wellness.
Breathing
In Australia, smoking rates have declined dramatically and appear to me to be
similar to those in the United States, although asthma has similarly climbed. I
believe the asthma increase will eventually be proven to result from the increasing
levels of insult to the developing immune system from early cord clamping,
excessive vaccinations, and exposure to antigens from cow’s milk and formula
rather than the human milk we were biologically programmed to thrive on for the
first few years (see aTLC.org).
Eating
Australia is quickly catching up with America in obesity, although the distinctive
Australian beer belly dramatically stands out, given their higher consumption of
alcohol. Australia’s food supply is similarly dominated by huge multinational
corporations focusing on profits, not health, and packaged "food” laced with
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Fortunately there is now a growing local
food movement—part of increased localizing of the area’s economy.
Moving
Fitness levels appear to be no better than in the United States. (It’s nearly always
the worst area in the Wellness Inventory.)
Feeling
I don’t think Australians’ ability to be conscious of their feelings and express them
constructively is any better than the poor abilities of the American mainstream
culture. This is a really hard one many of my friends and I continually work on.
Playing and Working
Australia is far ahead of the United States, with much longer built-in vacation
times for employees, shorter workweeks for the salaried, and a culture that takes
weekends seriously. ("Put another shrimp on the barbie” is a very real
phenomenon.)
Communicating
I’m struck by the number of primetime TV shows that consist of a panel women
and men discussion interesting topics—often with a lot of humor—completely ad
lib (or so it appears). This is in sharp contrast with the more typical American
scripted TV dramas.
Intimacy
An Australian phenomenon I don’t see in the United States is that many men have a
backyard "shed” that serves both as their "cave” for alone-time, and a men’s social
hub.
Finding Meaning
For increasing numbers of Australians, there is a much greater awareness of the
worldview of the original Australians, which conceptually is a big stretch for
Westerners. This is captured beautifully in a Youtube version of the film "Kanyini,”
narrated by "Uncle” Bob Randall, one of the elders of Uluru, formerly known as
Ayer’s Rock. Many public meetings now open with an honoring of the original
caretakers.
Australia seems to have gone from a much less conscious colonization of
aboriginal lands (no treaties were signed because Aboriginals were not considered
human until late in the last century), to a much more inclusive understanding of a
worldview that is far more sustainable than our Western myth of unlimited growth
and progress.
Transcending
This refers to spiritual pursuits beyond ego concerns and is different from religion.
Awareness seems to be increasing in both countries, for example, through the
Mindfulness movement that has taken meditation out of the realm of Eastern
religions to a mainstream acceptance as a valid wellness enhancement.
Summary
These observations are by no means objective or conclusive, but do indicate some
differences between the two cultures, probably based in part by the relative
newness of Australian society. Europeans had been settling North America for
more than 200 years before the first prisoners arrived in Australia. There is also a
different mindset and cultural heritage of settlers who came for different reasons
(by choice, or not) and from very different periods of time. There are many deeprooted
cultural differences that I’m only beginning to appreciate after all these
years of living in a different land.
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John W. Travis, MD, MPH, specialized in preventive medicine at Johns
Hopkins University, founded the first wellness center in the United States
(1975), and co-authored several books including the best-selling Wellness
Workbook. He is probably best known for his Illness-Wellness Continuum,
which distinguishes wellness as a separate paradigm from the treatment
paradigm.
He is a proponent of full-spectrum wellness, which embraces body, mind,
emotions, and spirit, encompassing the entire lifespan and connecting all aspects
of environment—infant and adult wellness, community wellness, and global
systems wellness.
He teaches "Wellness Assessment and Health Analysis” in the online Master of
Wellness Program at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
His current interest is alerting the public about a phenomenon he named male
postpartum abandonment syndrome (MPAS). This frequently occurs when a poorly
bonded man (most men in the United States, according to Travis) becomes a father.
Old, unconscious childhood wounds are unwittingly reactivated and coupled with
the impossible demands of the nuclear family—a creation by our corporate-ruled,
industrial culture—leads to men feeling useless and unworthy. Thus MPAS drives
the hidden epidemic of disappearing dads—both those who leave physically, as
well as the vast majority who leave emotionally.
 
 
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