Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Republic) Share this | Hansard source

The past 18 months have placed an enormous stress on our community, and young people have experienced a unique loss in the pandemic years. Too many have missed out on what should be formative experiences and vital opportunities to develop. It's no wonder then that many of them are struggling with their mental health. Most of us have seen this anecdotally, but the evidence backs it up as well. Researchers at the Australian National University released a report on youth mental health that found that 71 per cent of parents had observed worsening mental health conditions in their family. According to the Black Dog Institute, the rates of psychological distress in young people jumped from one in five in 2012 to over a quarter in 2020. Thankfully, the rates of suicide have fallen over that particular period, but we still know that suicide is the leading cause of death among Australians aged 15 to 24 years old. For our young people, the decision to access mental health care is fragile, and, if they don't have a positive experience, they may not make another attempt to seek help. Youth-friendly mental health services aren't available uniformly to young people. That's why we need to provide targeted, sensitive and effective mental health support for young Australians now more than ever.

Over the past decade we have had an overdue revolution in our understanding of mental health. It's now time we backed that up with actual resources, including in our schools. And that's why we have been calling on the Morrison-Joyce government to increase mental health services and support for young people across all stages of ill health. We also need to focus on building the youth mental health workforce to meet the current and future needs of our young Australians. The recent announcement of a world-first national mental health and wellbeing strategy for Australian children is welcome and desperately needed. But the government has taken far too long to get there. We welcome the plan to tackle mental health issues as young Australians battle through this difficult period. Early intervention as well as the extra funds for support services like Head to Health are welcome initiatives. But it's long overdue. The strategy was in the works well before COVID and should have been implemented much sooner. There's an urgent need to support the mental health and wellbeing of Australian children, especially in the middle of a pandemic.

This plan also fails to embrace and to consider the impact that climate change is having on children's mental health. Australian children are especially vulnerable to anxiety, sleep disorders and a sense of hopelessness because of this government's lack of action and lack of commitment or positive language about taking a positive approach to climate change and investing in renewable energy. Australian children see what happens on the news every night, and when you have someone like the Deputy Prime Minister out there arguing on a constant basis that we don't need to take action on climate change and that there's not a problem, when children know that there is, makes them feel even more anxious and hopeless. There's no consideration of that in the national strategy.

There also needs to be a greater focus on services in the middle, if you like. There's great support for acute mental health services. If you're having a desperate mental health episode, you will be hospitalised and acute services will be available. There are entry-level services, but it's the services in the middle that are vitally important, particularly if someone is young and they are admitted to hospital during a mental health episode. After they're discharged there's very little in the way of follow-up and support in that interim period to get them through. That is the area the government needs to be concentrating on and investing in.

Students are now starting to head back to the classrooms after another lengthy lockdown and it's now more important than ever that they have access to mental health services, particularly those from poorer families. They're going to come back to school maybe not having access to the internet and maybe not having access to catch-up strategies that other students would have had, and they'll feel desperate and they'll feel left behind. That's why it's important that we cater for them and make sure that they have access to the services that they need.

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