A | 数据显示，过去十年本地年长者的失智症发病率有所下滑，更多年长人士加入职场是促使发病率下滑的主要原因之一。 CANBERRA, Australia -- Opposing campaigners made their final pitches on Friday over changing the Australia's constitution to acknowledge a place for Indigenous Australians on the eve of the nation's first referendum in a generation.The referendum has the potential to amend Australia’s founding legal document for the first time since 1977. But opinion polls suggest that the amendment will be rejected as more than four-in-five referendums have been in the past.Australians are being asked to alter the constitution to recognize the “First Peoples of Australia” by establishing an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.The committee comprised of and chosen by Indigenous Australians would advise the Parliament and government on issues that affect the nation’s most disadvantaged ethnic minority.Indigenous Australians account for only 3.8% of Australia’s population. But they die on average eight years younger than the wider population, have a suicide rate twice that of the national average and suffer from diseases in the remote Outback that have been eradicated from other wealthy countries.Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a leading Voice advocate, cited the Israel-Hamas war to underscore why Australians should vote “yes” out of kindness toward the Indigenous population.“This week of all weeks where we see such trauma in the world, there is nothing — no cost — to Australians showing kindness, thinking with their heart as well as their head, when they enter the polling booth tomorrow and vote ‘yes,’” Albanese said.“Kindness costs nothing. Thinking of others costs nothing. This is a time where Australians have that opportunity to show the generosity of spirit that I see in the Australian character where at the worst of times we always see the best of the Australian character,” Albanese added.Opposition leader Peter Dutton, whose conservative party opposes the Voice, said polling showing declining support for the referendum over the past year was evidence Albanese failed to convince voters of the benefits of the Voice. “He’s instinctively won their hearts because Australians do want better outcomes for Indigenous Australians, but he hasn’t won their minds,” Dutton told Australian Broadcasting Corp.Indigenous activist Robbie Thorpe drew attention to Indigenous division over the Voice this week by applying for a High Court injunction to stop the referendum. “The referendum is an attack on Aboriginal Sovereignty,” Thorpe said in a statement on Friday.But the High Court said his writ had been rejected on Thursday on the grounds that it appeared to be an abuse of the court process, frivolous, vexatious or outside the court’s jurisdiction.Thorpe is among so-called progressive “no” campaigners who argue an Indigenous committee with no power of veto over legislation is not a sufficiently radical change.Many progressives argue the constitution should more importantly acknowledge that Indigenous Australians never ceded their land to British colonizers and a treaty was a higher priority than a Voice.Conservative “no” campaigners argue the Voice is too radical and the courts could interpret its powers in unpredictable ways.Some Indigenous people don’t have faith that the Voice’s membership would represent their diverse priorities.“Yes” campaigner Kyam Maher, an Indigenous man who is South Australia state’s attorney general, said the question he was most often asked by thousands of voters was what result Indigenous Australians wanted.“I can say absolutely and overwhelmingly Aboriginal people want their fellow Australians to vote ‘yes’ tomorrow,” Maher said.An opinion poll published this week supported Maher's view that a majority of Indigenous Australians wanted the Voice although that support had eroded since early 2023.Polling suggests the referendum will lose despite Australia’s peak legal, business, faith and sporting groups overwhelmingly supporting the Voice.Anne Twomey, a Sydney University constitutional law expert and a member of the Constitutional Expert Group that advised the government on drafting the referendum question, said she feared that Australian lawmakers might give up trying to change the constitution if the referendum fails.“I think it is a big concern if we end up with a constitution that’s frozen in time that we can’t change,” Twomey said.“In practice around the world, when a constitution becomes frozen and out of date with the world that it operates in, it becomes brittle and when there’s ever any stress on it, it does tend to break,” she added.___Follow AP's Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific。
B | 心理卫生学院前年3月到去年9月对本地大约2000名60岁以上的本地公民和永久居民进行调查后，发布了《2023年长者身心健康研究》调查。
C | 调查显示，同2013年相比，2023年本地60岁及以上的年长者失智症发病率从10%下跌到8.8%。在这期间，患上失智症的年长者也从接近5万2000人，增加到2023年的近7万4000人，主要是因为年长人口增加了。调查也发现，退休人士和家庭主妇患上失智症的风险，分别是一般人的11倍和9.4倍。曾经中风或患有忧郁症的人患上失智症的风险，也是一般人的6.5倍和2.8倍。研究人员指出，同十年前相比，本地年长人士的就业率上升，更多家庭主妇进入职场，加上年长人士的教育程度比十年前高，以及中风人数减少，是促使失智症发病率下滑的因素。
D | 此外，本地失智症的治疗缺口（treatment gap）也缩小近20个百分点，显示更多患者获得确诊和治疗。另一方面，本地年长者过去十年的忧郁症发病率则略微增加，从2013年的3.7%，增加到4.4%。调查发现，离婚和分居的年长人士，发病率比一般人高出3.6倍，丧偶的年长人士忧郁症发病率也比一般人高两倍。教育程度在小学以下的年长者患上忧郁症的几率也比一般人高出4.2倍。
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