Tuesday, 27 August 2024

Youth mental health

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (17:25): (1071) My adjournment is for the Minister for Mental Health, and the action I am seeking is a commitment to developing a whole-of-government youth mental health strategy. The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on Youth Mental Health was published this month. The landmark global report, led by Professor Patrick McGorry, took four years to develop and was contributed to by scores of people. It paints a stark picture but should be compulsory reading for every MP.

Mental health issues now account for the greatest burden of disease and are the leading cause of death for young people in this country. Rates of mental ill health have risen steeply since the early 2010s, well before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and it is something that I experienced unfolding in my work as a GP. Almost 40 per cent of young people now have a diagnostic-level mental illness, and for young women it is almost 50 per cent. The report delves into the drivers of this dramatic and disturbing shift, identifying several global megatrends, including neoliberalism and growing economic inequality, loss of rights for young workers, unregulated social media, job insecurity, housing unaffordability and climate change. In other words, the future for young people is currently bleak.

Addressing this monumental public health crisis should be a priority in and of itself on moral and human rights grounds, but if all you care about is economics, then this report presents just as much of a compelling case to act. Failing to act will cost us all, particularly as our population ages. We are increasingly dependent on young people to support society. On the flip side, prevention and treatment of mental ill health in young people has a potentially enormous return on investment, significantly greater than most other areas of health care, where far more money is currently spent. Unfortunately, youth mental health continues to fall down the priority list for governments. As the report identifies, only a small proportion of young people can access adequate mental health care, and primary prevention is totally neglected by governments in their failure to meet young people’s needs more broadly.

We need an urgent whole-of-government response. Not only do we need a massive boost to youth mental health services to meet the needs of young Victorians, we must also address the drivers of poor mental health. This means targeting specific and well-recognised risk factors such as childhood neglect and abuse, as well as those that are more universal, like housing unaffordability, lack of economic security, lack of workers rights and, critically, the climate crisis. As the report forcefully argues, the policies that have generated this situation are the result of political and ideological choices. It is time this government made choices that value young people and protect them from preventable harms to their mental health.