“I am outraged at the ongoing lack of response to young people’s mental health needs,” says Mental Health Foundation chief executive Shaun Robinson.
A mental health crisis response conference last week confirmed young people in Aotearoa have the highest level of mental health need, and tragically, the lowest access to services.
A report launched at the Hauora hinengaro: He ara tūroa conference on 5 November showed nearly 70% of calls to the Whakarongorau Mental Health After Hours service were from people aged under 25 years. This finding underscored the fact that although more than 25% of young New Zealanders experience significant mental health challenges, nearly one in five find it hard to access mental health support.
The result is that young people are giving up. They’re feeling hopeless because their needs aren’t being met, and are turning to each other for support and advice online.
The heart-wrenching messages from young people at the conference included young people giving each other often-dangerous advice in lieu of accessing the mental health supports they needed.
“To hear that young people are advising each other on how to use medicine to fake overdoses just to try to get services to pay attention, made me want to scream for urgent action,” Mr Robinson says.
“To hear how unsafe it is for them in adult inpatient facilities was horrifying.”
“The Government needs to act now – to be pragmatic and double the number of services that young people need. Stop piloting or looking for perfect policy and do something – for a start, fund 10 new youth hubs or ‘Youth One Stop Shops’ and support existing ones to grow.”
Young people have told decision-makers, again and again, that they need holistic mental health services and supports that are free, timely, and connected to other health and welfare services – just like Youth One Stop Shops are. But sadly, funding for these youth hubs was cut only last year.
“To hear health officials at the conference say that we need to experiment to find solutions was disheartening,” said Daniel Mitchell, Co-Chairperson of Evolve Wellington Youth Service, a Youth One Stop Shop in Wellington.
“Solutions already exist within our communities, such as Youth One Stop Shops, and communities need to be empowered to bring them to life.
“Given the immediate needs of our young people, the Government should focus first and foremost on supporting communities to stabilise and scale-up services that are already known and proven to meet these needs.”
Young people have the poorest mental health outcomes in the country – which should be headline news. Over the past five years, nearly 4,000 fewer rangatahi accessed specialist mental health services, despite rates of poor youth mental health nearly doubling – a reason the Mental Health Foundation recently launched a youth mental health petition directed to the Minister for Mental Health.
“The new evidence piles on top of other evidence, which piles on top of other evidence – report after report. This tragic situation for young people’s mental health is the elephant in the room that officials and politicians seem reluctant to look at. Most appallingly, they are unwilling to do anything meaningful about it,” said Mr Robinson.
“Why? Why are we continuing to let this situation get worse and worse and worse? These are our children for goodness sake!
“Maybe the answer is that the health system – which is massively over-stretched – has been designed by adults for adults, and simply finds meeting young people’s unique needs too hard.
“But the answers to this problem are staring us in the face,” Mr Robinson says.
“Young people said they want services from people they can relate to and trust, who listen to them and can help them with their full range of needs. We don’t need to find the solutions for young people – they are already well known.
"Officials and politicians need to stop navel-gazing and start acting. Fund Youth One Stop Shops, fund youth mental health residential and respite services in communities, raise the age limit for child and adolescent mental health services to 24 years (currently only 17 and under), and expand existing school-based mental health and wellbeing services.
“And don’t tell me we don’t know enough or it’s too hard to collaborate with Education or Oranga Tamariki. We must stop letting our young people down so appallingly.”