Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Standing Committee on Health and Ageing I present the committee's report entitled Before it's too late: inquiry into early intervention programs aimed at preventing youth suicide, together with the minutes of the proceedings.

In accordance with standing order 39(f) the report was made a parliamentary paper.

In approaching this inquiry into early intervention programs and preventative youth suicide, the committee was concerned that while suicide accounts for a relatively small proportion of deaths overall in Australia each year—around 1.5 per cent for the population as a whole—among young people suicide rates remain disproportionately high. Statistics from 2009 indicate that suicide was responsible for one in four deaths of young Australian men under the age of 25 and around one in seven young women in that same age group. The committee felt that this regrettable situation warranted further investigation. The report I tabled today is the culmination of that investigation. It is based on the work of the current committee and its predecessor in the 42nd Parliament, which had carriage of the inquiry until the 2010 federal election was called.

The inquiry was informed by a series of roundtable discussions that were conducted between February 2010 and February 2011. During these roundtable discussions, the health and ageing committee heard from a range of organisations—some of which promote mental health, wellbeing and resilience among young people—and, most importantly, from young people who had themselves gone through processes. The information from these discussions was also supplemented by many, many written submissions.

An important starting point for the committee was evidence which suggested that measures taken by successive govern­ments had resulted in a decline in youth suicide rates. The committee was keen to learn more about how these measures had contributed to this decline and how to be able to identify what more might need to be done to continue this downward trend. Therefore, the focus of the committee's investigation was on early intervention and prevention.

The committee's findings are presented in the report, along with a number of recom­mendations which, if implemented, the committee believes could contribute to a further reduction in youth suicide rates. The committee believes that school based social development and mental health education programs are likely to have a significant impact on preventing suicide by promoting wellbeing and resilience among young people. A key recommendation is for the inclusion of this type of education in the national curriculum for all primary and secondary school students. Early detection of young people in need of assistance and referral to the appropriate assistance services is also extremely critical to the prevention of youth suicide.

The committee also acknowledges the significant additional support announced under the government's 2010-11 federal budget for programs and services to improve mental health and wellbeing, including measures which specifically target young people and suicide prevention. Many of those measures announced align very well with the recommendations made by the committee in the report.

As I mentioned previously, the com­mittee's inquiry was informed by discussion with young people who had varying experiences with youth suicide, some having lost their family members, siblings or friends, and others who had themselves contemplated or even attempted suicide. It was very moving at that roundtable to hear those young people tell us what they had been through, what assisted them and how they had got out of that terrible period in their lives. In particular, the committee would like to express its sincere thanks to those young people who provided confi­dential yet very candid first-hand accounts of their own experiences. Their contribution was absolutely invaluable and has provided the basis on which this committee has formulated many of its recommendations.

In closing, I thank all the committee members, especially my deputy chair, Steve Irons, the secretariat, all the witnesses who spoke in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth and, of course, those who made written submissions. I commend the report to the House.

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