Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Standing Committee on Health and Ageing report tabled on Monday, titled Before it’s too late, about youth suicide in Australia. The report focused on early intervention programs aimed at preventing youth suicide and covered two parliaments, those being the 42nd Parliament and the 43rd Parliament. I notice the member for Kingston is here in the chamber, who was on the committee during the 42ndParliament. It is regretful that she has left the committee and was not able to continue with her support on this particular inquiry. But I was very pleased when, in the 42nd Parliament, we decided to do this report, even though the Senate was also running a committee inquiry into suicide. As it states in the report:

Although the … Committee was aware that the Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee had already initiated a comprehensive inquiry into suicide in Australia, it felt that a House of Representatives inquiry, if appropriately focussed, could complement that work.

Initially, when I requested that the committee look at the possibility of doing an inquiry into youth suicide, it was because of my personal involvement with groups such as Youth Focus and the Esther Foundation and as the patron of SIDS and Kids in Western Australia. It was also because I had met with parents who had experienced the loss of their children through suicide. As human beings we know that we are all going to have to deal with the loss of loved ones at some stage, whether it be through natural causes, accidents or suicide. Our communities have to deal with the effects of suicide, and that does provide many challenges for families, friends and schools, and those effects can be very damaging in more ways than the experience of grief. We could see that in the evidence we took, with cluster suicides now, unfortunately, becoming more common.

On Monday, when the report was tabled, I spoke about some personal experiences to bring a human touch to the launch of this report on suicide, which sees the loss of far too many of our most precious resource: the children and youth of our communities. I also spoke about the fact that as a nation we provide many millions of dollars to prevent road accidents and deaths in the workplace; I hope that this report will encourage our nation to provide and support early intervention programs that will reduce the number of suicides, whether they be youth or older people who take this step for many different reasons. Figures show that, in 2004, 500 more Australians committed suicide than died in road accidents in Australia.

On Monday I also detailed some of the important parts of this report and I would like to continue with that. I restate that the level of concern about the statistics on youth suicide is due to the fact that the statistics are not nationalised, with many states keep differing records, and this needs to be addressed. Statistics on suicide in Australia are available from a number of sources. National data on suicide is published in some years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the ABS. The most recent data, published in 2007, contains summary statistics on deaths registered in 2005 where the cause of death was determined to be suicide. Even more recent, though less comprehensive, statistics on suicide in Australia are published annually in the ABS Causes of Death reports. The most recent report, released in 2011, provides information on suicides based on mortality data from 2009.

Coroners, through the National Coroners Information System, NCIS, are another significant source of suicide data. In addition, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has produced a number of publications based on information extracted from the AIHW mortality database. These data are supplemented by data collection and research conducted by academic institutions and community based organisations.

It is clear that there is a range of information on suicide being collected by different organisations with different collection and reporting standards. The committee understands that the lack of a nationwide, systematic approach limits the usefulness of suicide information. However, it is also evident that the problems associated with data collection on and the reporting of suicide, including youth suicide, are well recognised. In relation to this, the committee acknowledges that the ABS has already made significant efforts to implement reforms to improve the accuracy and quality of data on suicide and these processes are ongoing.

The first two recommendations of the committee's report are in regard to statistics. Recommendation 1 reads:

The Committee recommends that the National Committee for the Standardised Reporting of Suicide consider options for, and the feasibility of, extending the scope of social and demographic suicide data routinely collected and reported on, to include information on:

Recommendation 2 reads:

The Committee recommends that the National Committee for the Standardised Reporting of Suicide consider options for providing increased access to disaggregated suicide data.

The report goes on to say:

Of particular relevance to the issue of youth suicide, the Committee notes Recommendation 28 of the Senate report which calls for the ABS (and other relevant public agencies) to record and track suicides and attempted suicides in children aged under 15 years. As noted earlier in this Chapter, registered suicides in this group are relatively uncommon, though for a range of reasons it is likely that the reported figures are an underestimate. While acutely aware of the difficulties of establishing suicidal intent in this age group, and the extreme sensitivity for the families concerned, the Committee is keen to support initiatives which ensure that suicide in this demographic is not ‘hidden’. The Committee believes that appropriate recognition of suicide in the under 15 year age group is needed to ensure that prevention initiatives do not neglect these children. The Committee notes that the Senate recommendation has been referred to the ABS.

I know in my role as the patron of SIDS and Kids in Western Australia that the issue of suicide up to the age of 14 is handled by organisations such as SIDS and Kids, and they should be able to provide their statistics to a national body as well.

The report then moves into the area of understanding the factors that influence the likelihood of suicide. That will assist in developing strategies to reduce suicide rates. A significant body of research already exists which indicates that many factors contribute to the likelihood that someone will consider or attempt suicide or not. These factors generally act to either increase the likelihood of suicide—risk factors—or decrease this likelihood—protective factors.

Risk and protective factors are also categorised according to the level at which they are present—that is, individual, social and broad contextual. The report lists commonly cited risk and protective factors within each of the three categories. The risk factors for individual are listed in the report as:

The risk factors for social are:

The risk factors for contextual are:

The committee understands that there is a complex array of factors associated with suicide and cautions against an overly simplistic view of youth suicide and its causes. Access to accurate and comprehensive data and an improved understanding of the influence of risk and protective factors on young people are needed to support an improved understanding.

The committee recognises, however, that, while this will assist the identification of populations or groups at increased risk of suicide, it will still not be possible to precisely identify individuals at risk—hence the need for early intervention strategies. The committee understands that the main value of this information is to provide a good evidence base to inform the development and appropriate implementation of strategies for reducing rates of youth suicide and to enable effective evaluation of the impact of interventions.

Current approaches to suicide prevention in Australia are considered in chapter 3 of the report, including recently announced additional funding targeting suicide prevention by the government. I would like to mention that we in the coalition took a policy of early intervention to the last election. We committed to provide $440 million in funding towards 20 early psychosis intervention centres in major metropolitan and regional areas. These centres were to be based on the existing EPPIC model and were to provide comprehensive and targeted care for young Australians aged 15 to 24 years at clinical high risk and with first episode psychosis. The centres would have provided intensive interventions aimed at recovery and prevention of relapse. Four hundred million dollars was committed towards system design, service evaluation, workforce development, medical and allied health costs, case management, home and mobile care, and vocational recovery assistance provided by early psychosis intervention centres. Forty million dollars was to be provided towards additional capital costs of the centres.

There are many parts to this report, but one part that I took particular interest in was the gatekeeper training. One of the difficulties with early intervention is identifying individuals who need support and ensuring they get it. While noting that some have expressed reservations with the use of the term 'gatekeeper', in this context it is simply used to describe a diverse range of individuals who have regular contact with young people. These people include family, friends, teachers, youth workers, sports coaches, health professionals, law enforcement personnel and emergency services personnel. As noted in the submission from the Australian Psychological Society:

Each of these groups of people play two critical roles: to act as ‘detectors’ and monitor for early warning signs of young people at risk; and to act as ‘facilitators’—alerting and making appropriate referrals to specialist service providers as required.

Evidence suggests that building mental health literacy and providing ongoing training for people who have regular contact with young people so that they are better equipped to recognise early warning signs and make appropriate referral is likely to have benefits. Representing Lifeline Australia, Mr Alan Woodward reported:

We have found through our training of community personnel and what are known as ‘gatekeepers’—our health workers, youth workers and social workers and the like; people who are likely to come into contact with a suicidal person—that being able to explore that issue and provide an immediate and appropriate response is a very important step. We believe that that is also an area of suicide prevention which is known to be effective internationally and could be invested in further in Australia

Considering youth suicide prevention specifically, it is clear that family, friends and teachers have a significant role when it comes to managing the wellbeing of young people. Importantly, the committee does not expect these groups to assume the role of counsellor. Rather, the committee considers that it would be useful for parents, peers and teachers to be trained to recognise the signs of mental distress and be equipped to start a conversation providing 'at risk' young people with advice on the resources that are available or putting them in contact with a specialist service.

While acknowledging that teachers are already carrying significant responsibility when it comes to the health and wellbeing of young people, the committee believes that they are ideally placed as professionals, who have regular contact with young people, to play a significant role in the early identification of young people who may be experiencing difficulties and needing assistance. I am sure that any teacher would be willing to have the gatekeeper training, even if it meant saving only one life during their career.

Recommendation 10 of the report states:

The Committee recommends that teachers receive mandatory training on mental health awareness, including specific training to develop their capacity to recognise and assess suicidal risk.

The time to tackle mental illness is when it first occurs. Early intervention is important and the real focus of this report is on early intervention. As Patrick McGorry has said:

Evidence shows that with early and targeted treatment many young people are able to overcome their problems and return to health and lead socially and economically productive lives with lower incidence of progression or relapse.

Conversely, delay can be damaging, particularly for adolescents.

It is with this in mind that I conclude by thanking all the young people who made submissions to our inquiry. I thank them for their courage, as it made the committee's job easier. I see that the member for Robertson, who was on the committee, is in the chamber. I know that the evidence we took during that time was disturbing, but it was great to hear that the evidence that the young people gave was able to assist us in making the recommendations in this report. I thank everyone who was involved, particularly the secretariat and the chairman, the member for Hindmarsh. I commend the report to the House.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Swan for his comments on the report, which I think were fulsome and absolutely reflected the sentiments that we shared as we explored that territory. I rise in this place today to speak to the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing Before it's too late: inquiry into early intervention programs aimed at preventing youth suicide. It is with sadness, but in a sense also with pride, that this work is being undertaken at this level with the intention of securing much better life outcomes for others on behalf of people who are now, sadly, on the record as having lost their life to the tragedy of suicide. As members of parliament moving around the community we hear these stories and we are very sensitive to the impact that they have on the members of our community.

The reality is that roughly 2,000 young Australians in the 14- to 24-year age group die each year due to suicide. They account for 20 per cent of all deaths. It is the second most common cause of death, after accidents, amongst young people. Tragically, the rate of death in young males is one in four, a much higher rate than suicide deaths amongst older men. Suicide rates for young females are also higher than they are for older females. They account for one in seven deaths where, for boys, it is one in four.

This issue is of such importance to so many people, but I want to applaud the work of this committee of the 42nd Parliament and the work of the secretariat from that time to this time. As a new member, this is the second report I have spoken to this week on important work which we completed, which was commenced in the 42nd Parliament. This report came up with 10 core recommendations. In terms of how they covered areas, this is essentially how I see it. The first two really talk about recording and reporting, and the member for Swan made considerable observations on that. We found as we were taking evidence that trying to get data in particular jurisdictions was quite difficult, and then to seek any comparability across jurisdictions was almost impossible. So this is an area that needs serious review and serious action. The third recommendation essentially dealt with research going forward.

Then there was a cluster of recommendations that related to DoHA, the national coordination and the need for a holistic response. In terms of a recommendation for the Department of Health and Ageing, we made a recommendation that they need to take a leadership role in the facilitation of the sharing of resources. What was really heartening was that, in each of these jurisdictions, people have responded—agencies have responded and government departments have responded—with a range of resources that they are using and implementing. The problem is that across jurisdictions—even within jurisdictions—some of those great resources are unknown to others. We also noticed that linkages between community education and other agencies was something that was not well constructed and needed further attention. I have mentioned the problems within jurisdictions. If you amplify that out across the nation, you can see that national coordination remains a problem as well.

A holistic response really was the recommendation. I think this outlines the complexity of this issue. It is not one agency or one issue that can be attacked here. There is a whole-of-government response that is required in terms of dealing with a whole person. Those areas of cultural identity, employment status and educational, social and economic disadvantage all figured prominently in some of the indicators of young people's journeys to the point where they were so desperate they felt there was no future for them in this amazing country in which we live. We have people lining up from all around the world who want to come and live here. We have tragically young Australians who feel so disconnected from a hopeful future that they give up that opportunity for life. It is not a small thing.

In the time that I have remaining I would like to particularly speak to recommendations 7, 8, 9 and 10. I want to do that particularly because of my experience as a teacher. I want to put on record a brief story of an occasion in 2000—quite a long time ago now when you think about it. In 2000, I had the benefit of having some Swedish experts who worked in education and in drug and alcohol reform come to Australia. They were speaking to some outstanding Australian educators, who have absolutely, without doubt, amazing commitment to education and young people. The Swedish people asked these Australian educators, 'What do you do if you have a student who presents with drug and alcohol problems?' There was a series of steady responses: a low-order response, 'Provide support to the student, try to link them into other agencies.' The Swedes asked, 'What if there is a second incident, with a student bringing drugs to school or having drug issues or reports of this?' The Australians said: 'We would escalate it. We would attempt to try and connect them into agencies outside. But the school could not really continue in this way.' With a third incident generally it triggered an expulsion. The Swedish response I thought was quite interesting. They said, 'Well, what do you do then?' Thinking it was a language problem, the Australian educators repeated an explanation of the process. The Swedes replied: 'Yes, we understand what you said. But our question remains: what do you do then?'

I think that is the question that is at the heart of how these young people got to this point. There is wonderful work being done in schools and, happily, our suicide rate is not higher because of the outstanding work that teachers are doing in terms of identifying young people who might be at risk. Our wonderful schools are connecting outside the boundaries of the school fence into local community and health support agencies. But clearly we have not got it right when we look at the statistics on what we are confronting.

To emphasise that, I want to put on record a story of evidence we heard in Adelaide recently of a young woman we met who was in a community setting and trying to get her life back on track, a very intelligent young girl who faced a lot of difficulties, and she had many of the risk factors that the member for Swan identified evident in her life. She was in a situation where there had been family breakdown. She had had an unstable upbringing in her adolescent years. She had felt isolated from her peers. She continued to attend school for some period of time but she was the first to admit she had become quite a problem in school. She reached the age of 17 and showed up at school on that day. She said, 'My present on my 17th birthday was a form to fill out for me to leave that school.' Because she was a problem she was sent away from school. That is not the case in most schools but it is the case in some schools.

It points to a resourcing problem for many schools but it also points to a question of whose job is this. Is it my job to really attend to the mental health and wellbeing of some young people? In my experience previously I had the real pleasure of working for the Hunter Institute of Mental Health to do some qualitative research analysis of the rollout of the national MindMatters program. That program is a very powerful tool that schools are using. But in that research it became very evident that there were teachers in the secondary setting who understood the need for care for young people and intervention when they needed to assist and also understood the implications of curriculum planning that could have positive or negative mental health outcomes for kids. But there was also one piece of evidence that was gathered that I read where a teacher of mathematics said, 'I teach mathematics. What I do has nothing to do with the mental health and wellbeing of the kids in my class.' I sense for that person, who was obviously dedicated to teaching and a long-term teacher, that while they saw their professional identity framed in terms of information and skill development in mathematics, that had somehow become divorced from their ethical, moral, spiritual and social responsibility to look after the whole person in their care in the classroom.

That is why I think recommendations 7, 8, 9 and 10 really do something to address the situation I have attempted to outline in those couple of vignettes. Recommendation 7 is that the Australian government, in consultation with state and territory governments and non-government stakeholders, establish partnerships between departments of education and community-based service providers to ensure continuity of care for school leavers by facilitating referral of students to external counselling services where appropriate. The need to make this recommendation is in some ways a little surprising, and I do note differences across the jurisdictions. For example, in Victoria I became quite aware some years ago that it was a funding requirement of local community agencies and health based agencies that they actively seek links with their local schools. That was not the case in New South Wales. Sadly, I have been in the situation in my own office at the university trying to make phone calls to get support for students with local agencies and actually being told, 'That's not our job.' These are cavernous cracks that open when agencies are not working with a person's wellbeing at the centre of their role definition and when we have got this, I suppose, boundary riding between different agencies.

The eighth recommendation is that the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority include social development education and mental health as a core component of the national curriculum for primary and secondary schools. This is a very significant recommendation. ACARA is undertaking significant reform at this point in time of the whole of the national curriculum. The reality is that if, as an educator, you have a student who is hungry or physically or mentally unwell then investing in attempting to get them to learn is a zero-sum game if you are not going to enable them to feel well about where they are.

This recommends that there be a course for students to learn. But I would like to add to that. In addition to the students being mentally healthy and well, we need to attend to the fact that teachers need to be mentally healthy and well. Sometimes recommendations for youth forget to look at those who are going to provide the services for the youth, and teachers are under pressure. It is a false assumption that every teacher has things so perfectly aligned in their life that they come to school equipped with resources enabling them to respond to the real and pressing needs of students who are at suicide ideation stage, for example, or even further down the track than that.

The ninth committee recommendation is that social development and mental health education for older secondary school students should include specific components to assist them to be better prepared for moving from school into the workforce and higher education and to make them aware of the full range of services available to assist them as they transition from child to adult services. The reality is that, as we move to increasing the number of students who participate in further and higher education, we are dealing with students who are transitioning from one place to another, and that is a risk factor. 'Where do I belong? How do I fit in? What skills do I have that make it okay for me to be at this university? Who will pay attention if I do not look like I am going too well?'

In my experience in the university sector there are amazing teachers who are employing what Nel Noddings calls 'ethics of care'—that there is an underpinning of care for the human beings who come into their classrooms. Sadly, sometimes performance criteria lead people to think that it is about creating numbers, data and pieces of work, and somehow students are sacrificed. Sadly, some students do not make the six-week cut-off for HECS and they just disappear. I hear that Swedish question again: whose responsibility are they now? What happens now? The end of the story from the Swedish people was that the community has invested so much in these young people—they have sent them to school, cared for them and provided health, education, resources and support—and here they are, on the cusp of a wonderful adulthood. Can there be any more important time for us to pay attention than right there and then as we launch them into that?

The final recommendation is a critical one. It is that teachers receive mandatory training in mental health awareness. I think that is for their benefit as well as that of their students. Looking after our colleagues is an important part of our role, as is looking after our students. The recommendation is for the inclusion of specific training to develop their capacity to recognise and assess suicidal risk. Teacher planning also needs to impact positively on students. (Time expired)

Sitti ng suspended from 13:13 to 16:01

Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great privilege to stand here and talk about a significant report, Before it's too late: report on early intervention programs aimed at preventing youth suicide, which goes to the crux of some of the challenges that we often do not talk about. Certainly as a member of the Standing Committee on Health and Ageing hearing some of the representations from various groups, and having been involved within my electorate with a couple of families who have experienced suicide, I believe this is an important report in some of its recommendations—in particular, the need to coordinate not only between government agencies and between the Commonwealth and the state but with non-government organisations, which play a very key and vital role on the ground in influencing and impacting directly on those who experience moments of doubt or moments of depression or who contemplate suicide.

I was first introduced to this issue, strangely enough, back in the days when I worked for an undertaker. The thing that struck me was the number of people who committed suicide, because in that job I got to have an appreciation for the cause of death. Up until then, as a young 22-year-old, I had had no idea of the extent of the problem that existed. Certainly, now that experience is on my side in terms of life stage, suicide is something that has always sat there, that has been talked about quietly behind closed doors or that is often only talked about when it occurs directly for a family, where people do not understand the circumstances that a young person contemplates in taking their life—or ultimately those outside that.

Our focus was on youth because it is a transition period from being a primary school student or a 12-year-old through to that transition to adolescence and adulthood. I think sometimes that it is an area where we often do not contemplate the range of emotions that a young person experiences or the trials and tribulations that they are often faced with in the context of their social and peer interaction, and certainly within their own thinking, in terms of a professional pathway. I suppose what was most rewarding about the experience the committee had in this context was the brutal honesty of some of the young people in making very strong comment about their needs. I think as adults we make the mistake of not taking the time to listen or to reflect on what is required in order to address the needs and issues that young people are often faced with. One of the things I have always failed to comprehend or grasp is the lack of standardised reporting around suicide, because there are so many variables. I have worked in two jurisdictions in health, and, when we talked about overcoming Indigenous disadvantage for the Productivity Commission's report, the collections did not reflect the reality of what I knew on the ground. In Western Australia we had high rates of suicide in the Kimberley, but, equally, we had suicides—and the families were known to me—that were not reflected in the data.

The committee, in its considerations, talked about having a national standardised data collection that would encompass ethnicity, culture and geography. Geography is absolutely critical to the way decisions are made in the allocation of resources. It would also encompass educational attainment. I suspect, based on the work with the WA Institute for Child Health Research and the WA Aboriginal Child Health Survey that I had some involvement with, there were markers relating to the level of attainment. I noticed that young people who exited year 12 and who had a good grounding in education were in a better position to make informed choices about accessing services and where to direct their energy in seeking assistance. They knew there was a suite of opportunities for them to seek advice, to seek counsel. Particularly in the area of maternal child health, young people who left before year 10 were often constrained by their lack of educational attainment in understanding the opportunities and avenues through which they could seek the type of support that was required.

Employment status was also a factor considered by our committee. If you are unemployed, you have a low level of educational attainment and there are geographic issues, then coping in life becomes more complex, because there are added variables. Another factor that is absolutely critical that has to be considered in the context of a national standardised data collection, through every state and territory and nationally, is socioeconomic status. That is a factor that is often overlooked. It is understood in the conversations, but we do not have any rich information that informs the way in which agencies may respond.

One of the things that intrigues me is that Commonwealth funding, under both governments—the previous government and this government—is often allocated on the basis of responding to a need. But when I sought answers on how the decisions are made against a set of criteria—what is the basis for making those decisions using well-defined data, evidence and trending?—I was somewhat disappointed with the answer I received. It was really based on developing programs and developing policy that was meant to be universal across the nation and within jurisdictions. I often think that in that instance when we make those decisions, having been a public servant previously, we have not used the hard data to show the evidence of the exact degree of need by region and by locality. Until we do that, we will continue to not address the underlying issues that bring young people to a point at which their frustration and their anguish leads them to take their life.

I recently had a call from a constituent, a mother who rang me and said, 'Can you come and see me?' I had a notion that it was to do with a suicide, because I had heard from a club that her son was involved with that he was no longer there. I called in to see the mother, and I sat on her front veranda. She wanted us to use the front veranda so that we would have the opportunity of speaking privately. She said to me, 'You know my son committed suicide,' and I said, 'No, I did not know that exactly, but I had an inkling that that was a challenge that I would have to discuss with you this afternoon, and I am pleased to be here.' And what she talked to me about was the incomprehensible notion that her son had taken his life. I asked her whether there was any sign at any point, or any avenue of help for her. She said she did not know of any avenue of help other than where she could go for advice on his funeral. She said she had no inkling he was going to do this. She came home from work and then they had a conversation. He then spent time tidying up his bedroom and doing things that were not typical. She said that, in hindsight, she wished she had known that that was some indication there was a problem. She said he went about his business and then sat down and had tea with them. He asked for one of his favourite meals. He then spent some more time with the family and then said he was going to bed. But he came back out and asked his mother if he could take the dog in with him. His dog was always with him. She said that, later that morning, she heard him get up and go outside but, because of the nature of his job, she did not give any thought to that. About an hour later she thought to go outside and take a look, and what she found was that he had taken his life. She said to me, 'You and one other person are the only people who have come to talk to me about my anguish, my pain and my lack of understanding as to why my son, who had so much to give and so much to offer and was an integral part of the family, did this.' And his twin is also facing the same issue.

When we talked, what became absolutely apparent to me was that the knowledge of who was available in terms of help or who to turn to for an understanding of the signs and symptoms was just not there. She said that it would have helped if she had she known about and read about suicide. A thing that worried her was the notion of copycat suicides. She said that until we have the intervention, unless we have that type of support for these people——meaning the young men and women who associated with her son—something was likely to happen to another. They felt the grief, and that was certainly evident at the funeral.

This woman has now gone on to work with two gentlemen at the Swan Districts Football Club—in particular, the former West Coast Eagles player Peter Matera. What they have done is bring together the senior Aboriginal women. They have also brought together a whole group of young people to talk about what adults and elders within the community need to understand about suicide and the signs they should look for.

What I like about the work, the report and particularly the thinking of the committee is the need to connect the dots and look at the coordination that must exist between the Commonwealth, states and territories and the non-government sector and within the community. What we often heard was that the non-government sector had a reporting expectation but the sharing of information was not widespread or common. And yet they all had a patch in the suicide prevention field.

What I find sad is that we have a range of programs, often designed and developed by bureaucracies. The committee's report says we should listen to what young people flag as the issues. My colleagues on the committee talked about a roundtable they held in the south-eastern region of Australia. They talked about the richness of the shared experiences that young people provided to them as a committee. What they also found was a depth of feeling about the need for help. I hope that our report, before it is too late, will give young people the opportunity to influence the agenda. We have to think about every point of transaction and interaction between every form of government agency and non-government agency and the communities in which we live and which we influence. We need to think about the ways in which they can reach out and help people who are screaming out for the type of intervention that will set them on a pathway such that they will not take their life. We need to give these people the type of help that they need so that they can build the strength to take the pathway of opportunity that they were destined for. It is sad in our country to see loss of life when we could and should have intervened.

I will be working with my colleagues and many others to ensure that the messages in this report are permeated throughout the communities in which I am involved throughout my election—because I do have challenges in my electorate, as people are now raising this issue with me. And I want to work with them to look at the ways in which we can change and influence others so that we can bring about effective ways of saving lives and providing pathways of hope and opportunity. We need to give families the strength to have the discussions, to reach out, to understand and to influence their young family members so that in the future they will not have to experience grief.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to congratulate the member for Hasluck on his excellent contribution to this debate. It has been a pleasure working with him on this and other issues on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing. He makes a real commitment and shows understanding of the issues that come before the committee. This is an issue that impacts on every member in this parliament. It is something that we have all be confronted with at some time or another: the news that a young person in our electorate has taken their life. Then you see the impact that that has on all the other young people within that school or their social group. It has this ripple effect and causes so much anxiety and pain to so many members of that community. It is very sad when a young life so full of promise ends without that promise being realised.

During this series of roundtables that were conducted, I was overwhelmed by the freedom in the way that the young people communicated with the committee and expressed what they thought and how they believed that the problem could be resolved. It was not just about sitting around a table and hearing about problems; it was about hearing about what problems there were now and looking towards the future to what actions could be taken to improve the situation. When we look at youth suicide, we all ask the question of why young people take their lives. One of the first things that comes to mind is the fact that young people tend to not think through the consequences of their actions. They do this without realising that if they take their lives there is no tomorrow; that is it. The friends that they believe will mourn for them will do so. But, unfortunately, they will never know about that, because once they have actually taken their lives that is the end of it. There has been a lot of research undertaken as to why young people take their lives and how, as a community, we can take action to prevent this and how it can be recognised before it happens. There is no one answer to the question. It is very varied. There are a number of different signals that can be given in relation to a person's intention to commit suicide. The member for Hasluck gave a perfect example of a young person who approached it in a very planned way. Quite often the young person will have an argument with somebody and does not think through the consequences of their actions.

There are some significant risk factors that relate to youth suicide. One of those is gender. There are many more young males who take their life than young females. The area in which a person lives also contributes to the likelihood that they will commit suicide. It is a well-known fact that is supported by research that young people living in rural and remote areas are more likely to take their lives. If you add to that the fact that they may be Indigenous, they are even more likely to take their own lives. So there are some particular geographic and social factors that can be indicators of the likelihood of a person committing suicide. Also things like unemployment, loss and separation, peer rejection, social isolation, imprisonment, poor communication skills and a family history of suicide and mental illness. It is important that as a society we recognise these as important issues.

One of the things that became very apparent to the committee during the hearing was that the data that is available around youth suicide is of variable quality. There does not seem to be a lot of consistency in it. There is a definite belief by professionals working in the field and by those people who are associated with recording the data that they do not truly reflect the number of youth suicides that take place. One explanation for this is that where it is uncertain, the coroner will always deliver an open verdict because it is much better, much easier for family and friends to cope with that fact. Also, there are reports of young people who drive their cars into a tree and it is recorded as a car accident not as a youth suicide.

There is a need for a standardised approach to the reporting of youth suicide and there needs to be more research done in this area. The committee recommended that this was one of the actions that should take place. It also recommended standardised reporting of ethnicity, culture, geography, educational attainment and employment status, which is a very big issue. Socioeconomic status is another factor as to whether a person is likely to take their own life. Young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to take their lives more frequently than those from a higher socioeconomic background. But, having said that, the fact is that young people who take their own lives come from all socioeconomic groups, and every young life that is lost is a loss for the future of this country—a loss of opportunity and an opportunity cost—and we should be working towards making sure it stops.

The committee held a number of roundtables, which I would say I was privileged to attend, in particular the roundtable that was held in Sydney. Part of that roundtable was earmarked as confidential because there were in attendance a group of young people who are openly shared with us their experiences. It was very moving. These young people told us how they had attempted to take their own life on a number of occasions or that they had had someone in their family take their own life, and how they had developed a support network that they were rolling out throughout communities across the country. The absolute openness of those young people was so refreshing, and it was enlightening—I learnt so much from them and their experiences. I also learnt that as a member of parliament there is a lot I can do, and a lot that we all can do.

Another thing I learnt was that young people these days communicate very differently from young people in my day. The internet—and communication via the net—is both a resource and a tool for young people who are contemplating taking their own life, but it is also one of the things that can cause a person to become extremely unhappy or depressed. I am sure I am not unique in this and that other members have also been contacted by parents whose children were subjected to cyberbullying, impacting those young people to the extent where they have had to be removed from school and come very close to taking their own lives. And the bullying that takes place not only does so in their locality but spreads to whole regions, and it is extremely traumatic for the young people involved.

The Inspire Foundation, an organisation that I directly contribute to on a monthly basis, does some excellent work using the net. It is the positive side of the net. It tries to counteract the negatives of the net and build on the positives by linking into the way that young people communicate these days.

The fact is that we have so many good people out there working in this area, in this space, providing programs and assistance; but, as the member for Hasluck said, in many cases they are not talking to each other. We have got the federal government putting out some wonderful programs which they started in the previous parliament—and there was much more money put into suicide prevention measures in this budget; then we have got the state governments all contributing and doing some excellent work in the area; and then there is the non-government sector, working long and hard to provide wonderful programs. The problem is that they are not talking to each other. So one of the things that the committee felt very strongly about was the need for everybody to talk to each other and work together and to remember that it is this young person who needs the assistance and the best way to do that is through a structured plan where that person is at the centre of it rather than through different organisations providing a fragmented service. It was also felt that there needed to be some sort of a continuation with programs once a person has either left an acute stage program or left the education system where they may have been receiving support so that the support and help that they got continues on.

This was a unanimous report of the committee. Every person on that committee was totally committed to all the recommendations that we have in this report. There are 10 in all. We need to have more research, we need to have more communication, we need to listen to what the young people say, the programs that are provided need to be integrated and we need to spend a lot more time on ensuring that we have the right sourced data. I will conclude by reading out a tweet that I received from YACWA after we had been over there. The tweet said, 'Thank you for contributing to the roundtable.' Young people appreciate our support and they communicate with us— (Time expired)

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

) ( ): There are a lot of issues that get debated in this place, and they seem to take on life-and-death proportions inside the Canberra bubble of politicians, media commentators and bureaucrats. But today I am thankful for the opportunity to talk about an issue that really is of life-and-death proportions, and that is the appalling suicide rate in our nation and the need to take more action to reduce both the impact of suicide and suicide attempts within our community.

I am concerned primarily that it is an issue that we rarely talk about, even in this place. I happened to do a bit of a search through Hansard to see what other people have been saying about the issue of suicide in recent times. It surprised me that it has been mentioned only eight times over both chambers in the past two years. That is not meant to be a reflection on anyone at all; it just surprised me that there has not been much of a conversation in this place about the issue itself.

I would like to congratulate the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing for its report, Before it's too late. I also note that the document really does complement the Senate's report from last year titled The hidden toll: suicide in Australia. Although I was not part of the inquiry, I have read through both reports and I must say that the contents should be ringing alarm bells throughout this building and right across our nation.

I say at the outset—and other members have noted this as well—that it is a very complex and difficult challenge for us to deal with, and there is plenty of good work that has been done at many different levels in our community and by members of parliament. But we have such a very long way to go, and we need to challenge the taboo in raising this topic for a broader national conversation. One of our greatest challenges is to reduce or remove the stigma about suicide and to talk about it in a responsible and rational manner. I believe we need this national conversation because staying silent simply has not worked. I welcome this opportunity to speak in relation to the report by the Standing Committee on Health and Ageing.

My own experiences in relation to suicide through my previous career as a newspaper journalist perhaps highlight the point that I am trying to make. As a journalist on police rounds you would often be told about a death at the police station. But there was a policy in place within the media network and within our own newspaper not to report such incidents. The nearest comparison I can make is the old saying: if a tree falls in a forest and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a person commits suicide and no-one is allowed to talk about it, do their family and friends ever really get to grieve? Although the answer, I think, is self-evident—of course they grieve—if suicide remains such a taboo subject in our community and friends and family are not really allowed to talk about it and family members are too ashamed to admit the actual cause of death, how does the grieving process really get started? Also, if we are not prepared to talk about it and get a better understanding of what happened, how do we as a community learn from that experience.

I take up the case study mentioned today by the member for Hasluck in what I thought was a terrific speech to the parliament. He highlighted some of the very real concerns where the family and friends of suicide victims—the ones who are left behind—have so many questions about what they could have done. Was there something they may have missed? For those of us who have never experienced a mental illness it is very difficult even to understand why a person would take their own life. Sometimes there are simply no reasons. The previous speaker mentioned some of the risk factors, and there are risk factors that are very well known. But on other occasions there are simply no explanations. Sometimes it really does make no sense at all.

As with any problem, if we can measure it we should be able to manage it. That is an issue in this case because we are talking about something—the suicide death rates in Australia—about which we do not know the full extent of the problem. The official statistics put the suicide rate in Australia at around about 2,000 to 2,200 people per year, but I have read reports in which estimates were put forward that the figure could be as much as 16 per cent higher, which means we could be talking about suicide deaths in the order of 3,000 people per year. Although this confusion is regrettable, it is also understandable because it is very difficult for the authorities involved to be determining the intent when assessing the cause of death in circumstances such as car accidents or drug overdoses. It is very difficult in the absence of compelling evidence like a suicide note to know for sure that the person intended to end their own life. Also, there is a stigma attached to a suicide and therefore pressure, whether it is implied or real, to protect the reputation of the surviving family members or friends, particularly in regional settings, where people get to hear about the suicide and wonder what was wrong and what was going on behind the scenes. Questions are asked, particularly in a smaller regional setting. I am not suggesting for a second that there is any impropriety or anything like that. I am just making the point that the investigators and the authorities are sometimes under implied pressure not to officially declare a suicide in circumstances where it is likely the death was probably self-inflicted and may well have been deliberate but there remained an element of doubt, so an open finding is given.

Whether the figure is 2,000 or 3,000 is probably not overly important in the context of our discussion here today, but it does inform our debate and the fact that we need to take more action as a nation. Even if we take that official figure of around 2,000 it is an alarming figure. It means that during the last four days of parliamentary sittings probably 25 Australians will have ended their lives deliberately.

In the context of the report, Before it's too late: report on early intervention programs aimed at preventing youth suicide, the rate of youth suicide, which is particularly focused on, is one of great concern to all of us in this place, particularly for those members who represent rural electorates, where the rates of suicide are much higher. Referring to the report, its finding was that for young people aged 15 to 24 suicide is the number one cause of death. Young males in particular in regional areas are one of the highest risk categories for premature death from suicide. Despite an increase in funding over the past decade it still receives less mainstream public policy attention than issues like road safety and even sun protection.

Among the key recommendations in both the reports I have referred to is the view that we need to undertake a national suicide prevention and awareness campaign over five years with adequate and sustained resources. I believe that is a critical step. Such a campaign should target the at-risk groups—other members have talked about the risk factors, which are reasonably well understood—but should also apply at a more universal level to help build resilience, to help an entire community understand what the risk factors may be and, perhaps, to drive the national conversation about this topic, which has been taboo for too long.

I am pleased to say that in Victoria, in a regional sense, that conversation has started in recent weeks, with the ABC regional Statewide Drive radio program playing a significant role. I would like to congratulate the program, its host, Kathy Bedford, and the producers and staff involved. They have tackled this in what I believe is a very sensitive manner. I am sure that it is confronting for people, but I think we need to do it, and the media is an important tool at our disposal for raising awareness and assisting our community. I noted in the report and in previous reports we had talks about developing the use of social media so that we are interacting with young people in a medium that suits them.

I would also like to congratulate the government while I have the opportunity on the $18.2 million provided last week for Lifeline to allow toll-free calls from mobile phones. Increasingly young people rely on their mobile phones, and you do not want anyone not being able to seek help simply because they are out of credit on their phone. So I think that is a very important initiative.

I also want to refer, while I have the opportunity, to the comment piece by the 2010 Australian of the Year, Patrick McGorry, who wrote about the type of conversation that I think we need to have. Regarding the taboo that surrounds suicide, in his comment piece he said:

This culture of secrecy not only increases the risk of suicide, it also hampers the ability of the bereaved families and friends to recover from their loss.

Unlike the road toll, which has reduced by one third to 1,600 deaths a year and continues to decline, suicide remains a taboo subject and is sidelined in social policy.

…   …   …

As a society we remain reluctant to talk about suicide for fear it will inspire "copy cat" behaviour. We have warned off journalists and editors who believe that the issue cannot be routinely covered.

As a result the media fails to bear witness to the corrosive effects of these daily deaths on the family and friends of those who take their lives.

And he goes on to say:

There is no evidence to suggest that sensitive and accurate reporting of suicide inspires others to follow. The exception is the celebrity suicide which the media typically does cover.

As with the road toll, the media should keep and frequently report a tally of the lives lost to suicide through a national campaign backed and funded by the federal government.

…   …   …

There are real solutions available to us to significantly reduce the numbers of Australians who needlessly die by suicide. But to solve this problem, we must first talk about it.

As members of this place, I believe, as the previous speaker indicated, that we do have a very important role to play in helping to deal with this issue. Other members, I am sure, like me, visit a lot of schools. We get to talk to a lot of young people. And we can help to pass on the critical messages which one day may help save a life.

I often think of youth suicide in particular as a permanent solution to what may have been a temporary problem, and I noted the previous speaker indicating that young people can be impetuous; they can take action without fully understanding the consequences. But, with support and treatment and early intervention, I am sure that we can help to save lives.

I am reminded again of an old saying about it taking a village to raise a child. We are all stakeholders in this issue and there is a lot of collective wisdom in this place. As much as we may belittle each other from time to time on different areas of policy, there is collective wisdom in this place, and we have the capacity in this place to do better on this issue. If we see a young person in our community who is struggling as a result of family breakdown, or abusing drugs and alcohol, or clearly suffering from some mental health issues, we need to be prepared to offer some level of support and be able to intervene. We need to have the tools at our disposal to be able to be the person who takes action and gets them the sort of help they need.

The report we are debating today does make that point. The report talks about the training of these so-called gatekeepers and the need for greater collaboration between all levels of government and service providers. One area that really does concern me is that we cannot afford to have these turf wars. We cannot have this silo mentality where one organisation is offering one level of assistance and another is offering something else and they become quite territorial. It makes it very hard for people, particularly young people who are not used to dealing with agencies and authorities and who may be disoriented anyway or unsure of what they need to do next; they do not need to be tied up in some sort of confusing maze of bureaucracy about which agency does what and who they need to go to see to seek help.

So I think there is a need for better collaboration. But, naturally, as a member from a regional area, I also believe there is a massive need for more investment in services in regional areas themselves, where it is often very difficult for people with mental health issues to receive support in their own communities. In my own electorate, almost invariably you have to travel if you need critical mental health assistance. I think we need to get the most out of every service that we already have and avoid duplication and confusion on the ground. On that gatekeeper training, I think that is a very important point made in the report. It is critical for people who work with younger members of our community that they have the skills to monitor, to detect any early warning signs, and then to help facilitate any treatment that may be available in that local community.

But I think the key point in all this is to remember that we can do it. We can save lives if we pass on the skills to our families and friends, and to teachers, youth workers, sports coaches, health professionals and law enforcement officers. Anyone who has regular contact with young people is in a position where they may be able to offer assistance with the right training in the future. As someone who is directly involved in surf lifesaving, I get to meet hundreds of young people in my community every year. They are almost without exception positive young achievers. But even among them you find issues of self-esteem, occasionally even bullying, even in a protected environment like a surf lifesaving club, where some kids do not feel quite up to it. You need to be able to help them to build their resilience and to take on challenges in a controlled manner. I think that is very important for them in helping them to build their self-esteem.

There are things we can do in our daily lives as active members of our community, beyond registered programs that may carry the banner of a suicide prevention program. I am a strong believer in the benefits of physical exercise, particularly in getting young people involved in team sports and community activities where they are part of something which is bigger than themselves and where they can find a role for themselves in the community. They will see that there is hope for them—they will find there is reason in their life and that they are part of something much bigger than they may have realised. On that point, there are many local solutions which we can help to drive within the broader national framework which the two reports talk about.

This is a very complex issue. Time for this discussion today is limited, but I encourage all members who are interested in the topic to continue to be involved. That we are having this conversation in this place is a major step forward; it is a very important step in the right direction. I know it is idealistic to believe that we can save every life, but I sincerely believe we can and must do better. I urge all members to work in a bipartisan manner to help prevent suicide in our community in future. Finally, I thank all the people in our community, the professional workers and the volunteers, who are already making a difference in this area. As a nation, we are indebted to you for the work you do for other people.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the report by the Standing Committee on Health and Ageing entitled Before it’s too late: report on early intervention programs aimed at preventing youth suicide. I will begin today by highlighting the importance of youth suicide prevention. In 2009, suicide was the leading cause of death for young people aged between 15 and 24, with 259 deaths. It continues to be the number one cause of death within the 15- to 24-year-old age group. Those at risk are often victims of bullying, including cyberbullying, harassment and discrimination. They can be made to feel worthless because they are socially isolated, are homeless or suffer mental illness like depression or anxiety. Developing a better understanding of why young people give in to suicidal tendencies will almost certainly help reduce the rate at which young people commit suicide.

Input from young people and community organisations has resulted in the key recommendations in the committee's report, which include approaches to reduce the rate of youth suicide, including research and evaluation to inform best practice strategies; collaboration; increasing mental health literacy; and gatekeeper training. There is no simple solution to the prevention of youth suicide, but one of the contributors to the report warns that a lack of action is only going to exacerbate the issue.

The Australian Psychological Society stated that it is in support of the committee's policy proposal. However, it suggests that intervention should be evidence based and it stresses the importance of tailored services, as there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all model. The APS suggests that those most well-equipped to intervene with young people at risk are qualified professionals, like psychologists, and that education and training for parents and carers, and for young people themselves, needs to be sustained by multiple sources. The APS also says that the problems or causes that lead to a young person taking their life need to be discovered and tackled head-on. Suggestions from the APS for an improved policy for preventing youth suicide include increasing frontline services, providing support for affected communities, targeting those who are at greatest risk, promoting mental health and wellbeing and creating additional 'headspace' and early psychosis prevention and intervention centres. Headspace was established with $69 million over five years by the Howard government in 2005 for the youth mental health initiative, and is an independent charitable foundation. It provides mental health and wellbeing support, information and services to young people between 12 and 25 years of age and their families. Headspace was established and funded by the coalition in 2006 across 30 sites around the country. The coalition's Real Action Plan for Better Mental Health included the provision of additional headspace sites throughout metropolitan, rural and regional areas.

The APS also highlighted a need for appropriate training for people who have regular contact with young people. At present, many professionals working with young people, the front-line staff and health professionals, will have completed the relevant course in mental first aid. The course is also available to others, including community staff, parents, carers and peers who are interested in completing the training. The APS has indicated that the key emphasis of this training is to take the information to the larger target audience rather than rely on traditional information-seeking behaviour. Therefore, the APS suggests distributing information about mental health issues in school newsletters and running information sessions at schools, community centres and local leisure centres.

Specifically, the role of schools and teachers is important in managing the impact of suicide on young people. A key secondary schools program is the MindMatters initiative, delivered by Principals Australia. This is a national mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention program delivered in 3,000 Australian secondary schools, including Elanora high school within the electorate of McPherson. MindMatters is working with high schools to embed promotion, prevention and early intervention activities for mental health and wellbeing and has been established since 2000. I believe programs like MindMatters, along with appropriate communication networks, are essential for the prevention of youth suicide.

In addition to being able to access relevant information, two-way methods of communication also need to be made readily available. Most of the time, those at risk of suicide need someone to talk to about the reasons they feel helpless. I would like to recognise the efforts of the Kids Helpline in providing a service to meet these young people's needs.

Kids Helpline is Australia's only national 24/7 confidential support and counselling service specifically for children and young people aged five to 25 years. It was only in 2003 that the helpline extended the target client age to 25 as an acknowledgement that people in that age group still struggle with the challenges of maturation.

The helpline has a referral database of more than 8,000 services, such as suicide prevention. Despite national data suggesting that the rate of youth suicide is on the decline, Kids Helpline is seeing an increase in the numbers of contacts from young people about suicide related issues. The organisation made a submission to the inquiry setting out a total of 11 recommendations. The submission provides information based on their work with young people and, in particular, the rate of suicidal thinking among young Australians and the types of programs that can both prevent suicide and reduce the rate at which acute distress turns into suicidal thoughts.

One of the recommendations was to ensure there is adequate public telephone coverage across Australia, particularly in rural and remote areas. Kids Helpline believes that ensuring free access to telephone services for all young people is essential in establishing contact with specialists who can help with youth issues and concerns. In 2009, one in five counselling sessions at the Kids Helpline were with a young person presenting with either a suicide related issue or self-harming behaviour, highlighting the need for our youth to be able to access pay phones not only for counselling purposes but also for their general safety and wellbeing. In addition to telecommunications, Kids Helpline has found that young people today prefer the anonymity of the online medium. During the last two years the rate of contact where current thoughts of suicide were expressed through the online medium was 33 per cent. The kidshelp.com.au website allows the opportunity to gather information and provides a two-way communication model through the 'Tell us your story' link, encouraging young people to share their experiences and the ways in which they overcame their problems. The organisation stresses the website is an example of an e-health initiative that can reduce the social isolation of children and young people through the power of modern information and communication technology.

Those who are seeking contact are mostly female, with males making up only 14 per cent of those contacting these services. This shows that young males are more likely to keep to themselves instead of reaching out. This is certainly of concern and should be of concern to us in the community. While thoughts of suicide remain higher with women, men are more likely to commit suicide, at a rate of four to one. This highlights the need to increase research into how we can engage with males to ensure that they are getting the help that they need.

It is relevant to note at this point that in submissions to the Standing Committee on Education and Employment's mental health and workforce participation inquiry, Dr Barnes from the Black Dog Institute said:

Depression has been described as a silent epidemic and you have properly heard lots of stats about that. However, we think it is worth repeating that one in five Australians will experience some type of mental illness in a year and the most common is depression and anxiety.

She then went on to say:

… mood disorders are a serious illness, potentially a fatal illness. We have some really shocking stats for Australian suicide rates. We know that around 40 people a week are killing themselves and, of those, around 30 are men. Obviously, every person, every individual is actually leaving a bereaved family member, co-worker and friends and the community, which then impacts on their mental health and then the ripples just sort of continue.

I would like to conclude on the issue of youth suicide today by highlighting the importance of continued support for mental health.

The coalition has a strong track record of taking mental health care seriously and providing the necessary funding to provide services to those suffering a mental disorder. In 2006 the former coalition government made the single biggest investment in mental health by any government in Australian history with $1.9 billion being committed over a five-year period for services for people with mental illness, their families and their carers. A commitment to mental health needs to be upheld, and I would hope that this would include support of early intervention programs aimed at reducing the rate of youth suicide, as these lives are certainly worth saving.

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not into the whole black armband concept or the idea of national guilt but I have to say that one of the issues that I believe is quite clearly a national shame is that of youth suicide. I am very glad that you are in the chair, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas, because I want to personally commend you on the report that we have before us and that we are discussing today, along with all the members of the committee and in particular my Nationals colleague the member for Parkes, who no doubt brought a regional and rural perspective to the committee. When I first came to this place I tried to get the committee to visit Mackay, given some issues that we have got there, but I understood it had moved on from the visits and that the public work was mainly done in the 42nd Parliament.

To get to the report, the statistics that are outlined in it are quite shocking, like the fact that one in five deaths in the 15-24 age bracket and one in three in the 20-24 age bracket are suicides. It is mentioned that suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents. We have to wonder, as is outlined further in the report, how many of those accidents may actually be suicides themselves when we have single-vehicle fatalities where it is not quite clear what the cause is. The report goes on to highlight that more than three-quarters of young people who commit suicide are male and that the suicide rate of people in rural areas is three times higher than that of their counterparts in cities. The fact that those statistics could be understated, as the report says—and there is certainly evidence outlined to that effect—is in itself shocking. The latest figures for suicide cited in the report are from 2009—and, as I said, they are probably underestimated—and show that, among those aged between 15 and 25, there were 259 suicides in that year. That means that, based on these rates, these understated rates, since we began sitting this week, there would have been two young people who have committed suicide and, by the time we finish, another two.

I want to get to the subject of statistics, as outlined in the report, and I had to dig to find statistics for the Mackay region. One report, put out by the Department of Health and Ageing, showed that we were, sadly, right up there. Mackay City part A was ranked second from 2001 to 2004 in terms of per capita suicide rates overall—not just youth suicide rates. Thankfully, that seems to have dropped somewhat in the following years, but we still have the reputation of being the region with the fifth highest suicide rate in Queensland. That, I have to say, was all done before the spate of youth suicides in Mackay which I outlined previously in this House, and I do want to touch on that issue again.

If anything, I think that the rate of youth suicide in the Mackay region has grown. As I said, Mackay has this terrible suicide rate; it used to be the fifth worst, but I am told it is now up to being the second worst in Queensland. That is in contrast with the view that Mackay, because of the mining boom, is financially advantaged. In fact, Mackay is extremely socially disadvantaged. We have families on high incomes but they are being fragmented by shiftwork, with fathers and husbands, often wives as well, being away from home. It is four days on, four days off in mine work, or worse than that. Families without the high incomes from mining pay a high social price for living in a boom town with astronomical rents and high prices. There are currently 30 to 40 young people per month that are identifying as homeless or experiencing severe family breakdown in the Mackay region as part of the mining boom. I state that because I really want to give the perspective of the Dawson electorate to feed into this report.

Again, I want to reflect, in this place, on the disturbing series of events that Mackay experienced in 2008. I will read from a report in our local newspaper, the Daily Mercury, from 4 September 2008 entitled 'Suicide watch'. It says:

POLICE and community groups are working together to protect a vulnerable group of street kids after their friend, a boy, 16, hanged himself in an abandoned house on Alfred Street.

The traumatised youths are now sleeping at the Youth Information Referral Service (YIRS), Victoria Street, to ensure no other member of the group harms themselves.

The death of the youth … was followed by three more suicides in the Mackay region and has prompted calls for a heightened awareness of the issue.

It was certainly a disturbing time for the whole community, when these events were prominent. But I have to say that the Youth Information and Referral Service in Mackay, now known as YIRS One Stop Youth Shop, transformed itself into this 24-hour, round-the-clock crisis centre, with staff monitoring and talking to the kids, patrolling the streets and doing all the things that needed to be done to ensure that these children did not take their own lives. I want to refer to Dannielle Wiseman who is a service manager for the YIRS One Stop Youth Shop. I have a statement of witness that the police took, which Dannielle has given to me to use in this respect. It really is a detailed and heart-wrenching report. The names are removed to allay any concerns, but she talks about YIRS providing service there and what they did. She says:

It was decided that the YIRS Service would be available on a 24 hour response basis with assistance from volunteers and community members.

YIRS assisted in the coordination of round the clock support with a minimum of one male one female available at all times.

They also assisted in the distribution of donated resources. There was to be no alcohol or drug use on the grounds. She goes on to say that she and her staff attended known locations where the group of children involved in this were meeting and practised suicide interventions. She personally took possession of:

… a number of items which were likely to have been used in hanging attempts by members of this group.

The response lasted for 10 days and nights from 1 September until 10 September. The work that was done by those people in this region on that issue is to be commended.

But we do have a startling lack of services in the Mackay region to deal with mental health. John Mendoza studied our mental health services in 2009, and his comments were that the community had:

… very little capacity to respond to the needs of those 3,000 adults who have severe levels of disability. At the very best, less than a third of the people with severe mental illness get any care at all and probably only 1 to 5 per cent are getting care that's adequate for them to function as well as possible …

He also said:

None of that service infrastructure exists in Mackay and it means that those in the acute care unit are constantly seeing people discharged being readmitted within a very short period of time.

That was a disgraceful indictment on the state of mental health services in the Mackay region.

Going back to the report: I have not read the whole thing. I have scoured it. But I am going to read it at length. Some of the recommendations that I have looked through revolved around improvement of services, particularly ones that have been seen to be working. The comment has come in there about headspace. Headspace is one of those recognised services that does something that actually works in this field.

I refer again to the police statement that Dannielle Wiseman has provided me with. In it, she mentions the coroner—and there is a coroner currently doing an inquest into these suicides in Mackay—and says:

I believe there should be a strong recommendation from the Coroner that our Service—

the YIRS service—

be provided with additional funding. This would provide a solid foundation of service delivery to young people to prevent a similar situation such as occurred in 2008 from occurring again in Mackay.

In addition I believe that the establishment of a "Headspace" facility attached to the One Stop Youth Shop Inc would allow the Service to expand and to meet the needs of young people in the Mackay Region. This would allow more clinical responses to be provided to assist in addressing this growing problem.

I absolutely concur with what Dannielle says and with what the report says. We do need an expansion of these services.

As I say, there is a current inquest into these deaths that occurred in Mackay, and we will get a series of recommendations from Magistrate Ross Risson, I understand in late August, about that. I do hope that one of those highlights the need for expanded youth mental health facilities in the Mackay region so that all levels of government take notice. Certainly this report points in that direction. The more ammunition that we can get as a community to address mental health issues and youth suicide in the Mackay region the better.

I will close by thanking a number of people who have been working with me on the concept of getting a headspace for the Mackay region. There is Dannielle Wiseman from YIRS. There is also Sandi Winner from the Mental Illness Fellowship of North Queensland. We have Colin McPherson from the Mackay Youth Connections Network and a range of other different groups and organisations. There is Leda Barnett—I could go on and on. People have been very willing to help, very willing to collect signatures for a petition on this issue. We got some 4,000 signatures, and the Minister for Health and Ageing, the Minister for Mental Health and Ageing and their shadow counterparts are all aware of this petition. I do hope that at some stage we have some recognition of that.

When I was talking about this issue to young people in my electorate—and it is a very difficult issue to broach with some people because they have experienced suicide in their own family or amongst their friends—I got a statement from a girl in my electorate, Krissy Mulder, which I need to repeat to the House here. I will end with her words. She said:

I have walked to the very edge and almost jumped, but I turned around in time to see the love, that the people that matter, had for me. However it saddens me to say I know a 14 year old who never made it to 15, because he couldn't find a way back. A 20 year old that never had a 21st because to make the hurt stop he stopped everything, and last month another precious life gone at 22. I will never be a number, a statistic on a piece of paper for a faceless person who never knew me, to say what a shame. People need help the most when they say they don't, and any help is better than nothing, especially when they don't realise how close to the edge they are.

How true are those words from Krissy. Contained within this report are some of the answers. I know the government is working in this direction, but more needs to be done and more needs to be done soon, particularly in the Mackay region. I commend the report.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak following the tabling of the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing titled Before it's too late: report on early intervention programs aimed at preventing youth suicide. I take this opportunity to congratulate the chairman and the deputy chairman of that committee as well as the secretariat on this important piece of work. As has been said by the previous speakers, more than 2,000 Australian lives are lost each year to suicide. Every day at least seven people lose their life through suicide. Every 15 minutes somebody around this great country attempts it.

With up to 50 per cent of young adults experiencing a diagnosable episode of mental illness between the ages of 12 and 25, this is a very important issue. With only 35 per cent of those with mental illness being able to get access to quality care, it is clear that more needs to be done around early detection and other measures. Indeed, in Australia, according to the ABS, suicide is the 14th most frequent cause of death. But in the age bracket of 15- to 24-year-olds it is the No. 1 cause of death. In 2009, 24 per cent of people in that age bracket died by suicide. It is more common in males than females. A remarkable 76 per cent of those who were lost through suicide in 2009 were males. In the 15 to 24 year age bracket, suicide rates are three times higher for those living in remote and rural locations, and the rate is four times higher for Indigenous people in the 12 to 24 age bracket. Hopefully those statistics give some sense of the scope and nature of the problem that we face.

In Australia, suicide and mental health has been a subject of taboo, but that is changing. We are confronting the statistics and working on innovative ways to tackle the problem. I pay credit to men like John Mendoza and Patrick McGorry, experts in their field, who have spoken up about this important issue and taken sometimes unpopular action which, at the end of the day, has led to greater government intervention in this area. I have been fortunate to speak on numerous occasions to both men, to speak in the parliament about this issue and to engage with groups like GROW and Lifeline and others that are doing work on the front line.

But what do we need to make the situation better? We clearly need more front-line psychological and psychiatric services. We need greater collaboration between service providers. We need additional support for those communities that are affected by suicide. We need to target those people, those individuals, who are at greatest risk of suicide. We need to promote the idea of wellbeing and mental health more robustly in our community. We need to improve the level of mental health literacy among all of us. Specifically, places like the headspace site referred to earlier are very, very important. Currently around Australia there are 30 of these sites, and I welcome moves to increase this number to 90.

I have had correspondence from people in my electorate about this issue. Laura Lloyd wrote to me about a girl named Prerna Diksha, from Fintona Girls School in Balwyn, in my electorate. Her brother, Abhishek Gaurav, who was a young teenager at Camberwell Grammar School, tragically took his own life, and she is asking why. Their family was actually from Boronia, and she is working with my friend and colleague the member for Aston, Alan Tudge, on getting a new headspace centre in the Knox shopping strip. This is a really worthwhile initiative and deserves to be supported. Likewise, in my own electorate of Kooyong I would like to see a headspace site. I think access to these services for young people would be a great improvement on what is currently available.

This report that has been tabled by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing looks at the risk factors for suicide and breaks them into three areas: the individual, the social and the contextual. Under the individual, it talks about substance abuse, homelessness, mental illness, poor coping skills, chronic pain or illness; under the social, it talks about abuse, violence, family dispute, conflict and dysfunction, peer rejection, social isolation and imprisonment; and, under the contextual, it talks about a lack of support services, poverty and neighbourhood violence. These are all factors that government experts tell us help to create a situation in which suicide is more likely.

While I welcome the government's initiative at the last budget to improve funding in mental health, I want to note that it has come at some expense, particularly the cuts to the Better Access program, where people were able to access psychologists and GPs and get rebates for those visits for treatment for mental health issues. That has been cut by this government. But, by and large, an investment of any new money is extremely important in the area of mental health.

Some of the other recommendations in this report which should be taken note of include the recommendation for standardised reporting of suicide figures. There is scope there for extending the data collection, taking into better account geography, culture, employment and socioeconomic status, and getting the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council and the Australian Suicide Prevention Advisory Council to work more closely on research initiatives and to develop a priority research agenda. While research funding has increased more than threefold since 2001-02, it still sits at only about $65 million per annum. There must be scope to explore new ways of capitalising on social media and the internet to engage with our young people to mitigate the risk of suicide. New youth suicide prevention measures are also recommended, as well as adopting an holistic approach to these new measures which takes into account cultural, educational, employment, social and economic disadvantage factors.

Better measures to provide continuity of care for school leavers is also recommended. Often you can find a school student getting advice and support on mental health related issues but once they leave school they are left to their own devices. We need better partnerships between the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and community based providers to ensure that these people do not fall between the cracks. We need to encourage our teachers to receive specific training on mental health awareness to increase their capacity to recognise and assess suicidal risk and to ensure that those people get the best attention.

This issue of youth suicide and mental health is an absolute priority for any government. I welcome new initiatives in this area. I pay particular credit to Tony Abbott for, ahead of the last election, taking the initiative in this area. I pay credit to those in the industry like Patrick McGorry, John Mendoza and many others people who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes for years to create greater awareness in government about what needs to be done. Not everything can be provided by the private sector. Not everything can be left to the market. Mental health is one such issue where governments need to step in.

If we take the measures recommended, together with others that are being undertaken, to encourage early detection, to better equip our service providers and our teachers, to provide better access for young people to headspace, EPPIC and other facilities as well as to remove the stigma that currently sometimes applies to mental health we will have a better chance of reducing these horrific figures where over 2,000 Australians die each year through suicide and where young Australians are disproportionately represented in those statistics.

I commend the committee and the secretariat for their work. Now that this body of work exists, it is incumbent upon government to take its recommendations, to consider them and hopefully to introduce them into Australian society.

Debate adjourned.