Following the State Government’s allocation of $11.4 million for youth mental health services locally, North Shore Living investigates the crisis facing our young people – its causes, what is being done to help and where the gaps in support lie.
Concern for youth mental health locally is an issue we’ve been hearing about for years now, and according to the data, there’s a good reason why.
The Sydney North Primary Health Network, which provides primary healthcare across Northern Sydney, including on the lower North Shore, estimates around 21,000 local children between four and 17 have experienced mental illness in the last 12 months.
There were also around 3,100 children estimated to have a severe mental illness.
While these figures were based on the national average, Medicare data does reveal approximately 20 per cent of Northern Sydney youth under 25 accessed mental health services in 2020/21.
This is higher than the Australian average and indicates an increase of 9.7 per cent on 2013/14 figures – two percentage points more than the rest of the country.
So, why do our local youth seem particularly vulnerable and what is being done about it?
Experts suggest social and environmental factors may allow for the rate of youth mental illness locally.
“It’s a static community, in a sense,” says Justene Gordon, CEO of local service provider The Burdekin Association.
“Add to that social media, and they’re [youth] connected within this community. That accessibility to information can cause a ripple effect.
“It probably shouldn’t be called a ripple effect, it should probably be called a tsunami, because it pushes out and it pushes out very hard.
“We’re seeing that. An incident will happen a couple of years ago and we’re still aware of it, and then there might be something else that happens that is connected.”
The lower North Shore’s rich natural environment may also have a part to play, with local youth experiencing the impacts of climate change firsthand, particularly with severe storms lashing Mosman earlier this year.
Seventeen-year-old local Luke Peterson says the subsequent eco-anxiety ‘weighs quite heavily’ on the minds of our young people.
“Young people are coping with all the trials and tribulations of everyday teenage life, but now there’s this added extra pressure. We’re seeing that there is this lack of action to address this issue that we’re definitely going to come to be responsible for,” Luke says.
Add to this the impacts of social isolation, fear and school disruptions during the pandemic, and local services say we’re only just starting to scratch the surface of the concerns troubling our young people.
“We are only in the initial processes of sussing out what’s happening for young people in the community because they’ve found a way to manage through COVID,” says Tanya Preston, operations manager with Burdekin.
“Since the pandemic, there’s a lot of education going on, which is fabulous. It doesn’t always end up being that it changes what’s happening on the ground. So, where is all the help?”
It’s a question the local health network is asking too, with its 2022 – 2025 Needs Assessment Report finding there is a ‘disparity in service provision’ across the region.
Prior to the pandemic, local service providers and those in the medical field were concerned that this lack of support was encompassing all levels of need locally, from moderate to complex mental health cases, and children were falling through the cracks.
“Young people are coping with all the trials and tribulations of everyday teenage life, but now there’s this added extra pressure. We’re seeing that there is this lack of action to address this issue that we’re definitely going to come to be responsible for,”
Luke Peterson, 17 yo.
In response, a mental health summit featuring police, local mental health services, politicians and other stakeholders was held at NSW Parliament in 2019.
Three years later we’ve seen the outcome of this summit – $11.4 million of targeted funding for youth acute mental health services in Northern Sydney in the 2022/23 NSW Budget.
This includes $1.4 million for additional staff at Northern Sydney Local Health District’s (NSLHD) Child Youth Mental Health Service; $1.1 million for more staff on the district’s Youth Response Team; and one million to develop a new youth drug and alcohol community treatment service.
A further $7.5 million was also allocated to establish four dedicated acute paediatric specialist mental health beds at Northern Beaches Hospital alongside $365,000 for a full-time child and youth psychiatrist.
According to the NSLHD, the Youth Response Team currently supports about 100 young people across Northern Sydney per month, with approximately 60 per cent of those youth residing across the North Shore and Ryde.
Meanwhile, the Child and Youth Mental Health Service, located in Brookvale, has also supported about 760 local young people in the past 12 months.
While the health district says the funding will ‘significantly benefit’ local children and young people, some services say it is simply bridging an existing gap in acute care that should not have existed in the first place.
“That’s the basics that should actually be in every community. So, in some ways, this funding is just meeting the need that was already there,” Burdekin CEO Justene says.
“Young people when they decide they need help, it’s like, ‘I need it now’.”
Tanya
“Where you see the gap is in the middle for really accessible, responsive, efficient and effective service delivery that’s really engaging and building capacity and resilience in young people.”
This lack of support for moderate mental health intervention is leading to blown-out waiting periods for our local youth, with Justene and Tanya confirming some of the larger organisations have waitlists of up to six months.
The Burdekin team are currently part of an interagency collaborative approach of organisations from across the region that meet regularly to reduce wait times by referring cases to other services.
“Young people when they decide they need help, it’s like, ‘I need it now’,” Tanya says.
“Tomorrow or the next day, they often feel different. So, then they fall through the cracks again if they’re not able to access it quickly.”
The issue is so prevalent Luke says he knows of peers travelling long distances to access professional help.
“Commuting can be such an issue for some people, and I think one thing we learnt out of COVID is there’s definitely so much value found in being face-to-face.”
The gap in moderate mental health services in Northern Sydney has led one local Federal MP to push the government to significantly expand the mental health workforce.
Dr Sophie Scamps, MP of neighbouring Mackellar on the Northern Beaches, says she will urge the Federal Government to train and foster more psychologists and psychiatrists.
The former local general practitioner (GP) also wants a mental health practitioner in every government secondary school and to establish a National Patient Waitlist program.
The waitlist would triage and track people from the moment they request mental health support to the moment they receive it through their local health district.
“It will show up how long does it take youth to be seen by the local services and the new drug and alcohol service, so we will be able to target funding more precisely,” she says.
“Hopefully, between us all, we can come up with some ways of helping young people that will really make a difference,” Justene concludes.
If this article has brought up any issues for you, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.
SYDNEY TMS