Tuesday, 14 October 2025

 Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (18:32): (1983) My adjournment is for the Minister for Mental Health, and the action I am seeking is a statewide strategy for regional adolescent mental health so that appropriate care, including inpatient beds, are available in every region. Mental health issues experienced by young people have steeply increased since 2010. The four leading causes of morbidity and mortality in young people aged 14 to 24 are suicide, self-inflicted injury, anxiety disorders and depressive disorders. Suicide accounts for the highest proportion of deaths in young people 15 to 20, and rates are higher again in rural areas. Rural young people have the highest rates of untreated mental ill health and face significant access barriers to treatment, including lack of service availability, cost, travel and stigma. Adolescence is the age where many mental health issues arise for the first time, including many of the most serious conditions. Being able to access appropriate care and support at an early stage can ensure better outcomes. The type of support required varies, and there is an urgent need for expansion of holistic, multidisciplinary models of care in different settings.

For some young people, at some points in their lives, the most appropriate place for care may be an acute inpatient hospital bed, yet despite this clear need and rapidly growing demand there are only 58 acute adolescent inpatient mental health beds in the whole state. Astoundingly, only four of these are in regional areas, in Mildura and Traralgon. There are none in the Barwon region in my electorate, despite it being the largest regional city in Victoria and having a new women’s and children’s facility being built. In the Hume region a $558 million redevelopment of Albury Wodonga Health will include a 32-bed mental health unit and not a single bed for adolescents. This cross-border region is of similar size to the Barwon region, with a catchment of more than 300,000 people. Box Hill is the closest facility, which is 3½ hours away. Too often these metropolitan beds are full, leaving regional adolescents with nowhere to go for what is often a medical emergency. I am not sure we would accept a situation where a young person was denied acute inpatient care for cancer or a diabetic crisis in the same way that occurs for acute mental health crises. The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System recommended at least 170 new acute adult and youth mental health beds and that care must be available close to home. This has not happened. I have spoken before in this place about the monumental public health crisis that is occurring in Victoria. Youth mental health remains too low on the priority list for this government, and it is time that changed.