Professor Adam Guastella from the University of Sydney talks about what we need to do to address the needs of young people struggling with mental health problems in Australia.
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00:00 I guess what concerns most people about the ABS data that's just come out is the 38% figure on
00:06 the 12-month incidence rate for mental health problems in young people aged between 16 and 24.
00:13 I mean by any measure that is a substantial amount of the population and I think it's quite
00:18 concerning for most Australians that so many young people seem to be struggling with mental
00:23 health problems. There's been three reports like this over the last decade and since 2007 there's
00:30 been a quite significant increase in the reports of young people having mental health problems. So
00:36 we know back in 2007 it was around the 24% mark and now the rate is around the 38% mark.
00:44 So you know the the increase is significant but also it was significant the increase came
00:52 in the previous report during COVID. So this report isn't particularly startling because
00:59 we had the large increase post COVID in the previous report but it does suggest that
01:04 and confirm what we know as researchers and clinicians that mental health is the
01:10 major cause of concern for young people and cause of burden for young people in Australian society.
01:19 What is I guess surprising to me is that the lack of support for young people to address their
01:25 needs. So lots of young people are reporting great difficulty accessing support even to the point of
01:31 digital tools. We saw that seven percent of young people report using digital tools for support and
01:38 in this sort of society where young people are on their phones and use computers all the time
01:43 it really surprised me that they're not getting high quality supports using digital technology
01:48 in the current day. For too long mental health has been seen as something that if we can we will
01:55 address it and the impacts of mental health both on the individual, the family, across society
02:02 whether it's education, juvenile justice, it shows that mental health is not an if we can it's a we
02:09 must address and it needs to be seen in the same way as we see physical health conditions and the
02:15 government needs to support mental health strategies at a systemic level in a more serious way. We speak
02:22 to young people all the time that simply say they cannot see a psychologist, they cannot afford to
02:27 see a psychologist and they don't know where to access the right amount of care. So there's a
02:31 number of things that can be done to address some of those things. First thing is the Medicare
02:36 billing rate has not increased for psychologists for about 10 years. It was about $118 10 years
02:43 ago and it's $124 today and if rents have increased that much, if food prices have increased that much
02:50 we'd all be very very happy but they haven't and so that's meaning that most psychologists are
02:55 charging a significant amount above the bulk billing rate which leaves financially vulnerable
03:01 Australians which are typically young people unable to access services. The second thing we could do
03:07 is by improving digital technologies and improving digital access to evidence-based supports. We don't
03:13 need influences, media influences providing evidence about what works. What we need is
03:19 reliable information about supports that can help young people deal with anxiety, substance misuse
03:26 and other mental health concerns and also as a source of truth that they can rely on this
03:32 information to get the supports they need.