Last week we saw $43m invested in mental health services in the Northern Territory.
This is great news.
Except there’s still a huge piece of the puzzle missing.
For young people, crucial services such as headspace, Head to Health Kids Hub, suicide aftercare and bereavement will help those seeking support from a health service in times of distress.
So what’s missing? What are we not talking about? What are we not seeing enough investment in?
The problem is that current investment into mental health services is only looking at one part of the solution.
Yes, we need investment in mental health crisis and suicide prevention services.
But mental health is not just about having the right door available in young people’s most desperate moments. Why are we not preventing them from experiencing the distress and trauma that leads to reaching the point of crisis? We must start earlier.
We know that young people are most likely to talk with a friend or peer support when they are struggling with their mental health, well before they walk into a service, if they access a service at all. This is why batyr focuses on empowering young people to support themselves and each other.
It’s about building their mental health knowledge and personal resilience. It’s about helping them develop stigma free and supportive communities that rally together. It’s about coaching them how to address life stressors wherever possible. It’s about stopping a crisis before it starts.
Every Government report in recent years has talked about social and emotional wellbeing programs in schools, mental wellness and resilience building for young people, learning from people with lived experience and strengthening health systems and services. We need to see greater investment across each of these areas, not just focused on one element or piece of the puzzle.
It’s not about either or.
This is why, alongside every Australian young person, batyr is calling for urgent investment in prevention, early intervention and listening to the voices of young people. We must meet young people where they are, and early, instead of hoping they manage to access an already stretched service when they have nowhere else to turn.
Yes, we must see investment in clinical support for young people in distress who need robust, available and accessible health services.
But, we also need to invest in supporting them to build a deeper understanding of their own mental health and life enhancing skills. Where do we do this? Where young people spend most of their time each day – at school and online.
When it comes to the mental health of our young people, we must start early or it will continue to be too late for too many.
By Nic Brown