‘It’s all they know’: Generation of Australians whose mental health is suffering most
In pictures they look happier than you’ll ever be - but these Aussies are struggling in a way many of us could barely comprehend.
Mental Health
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New research has lifted the lid on the stark number of Australians struggling with their mental health and wellbeing – and there’s one generation that is suffering most.
About one in three adults (29 per cent) rate their mental health as “below average”, research by News Corp’s Growth Distillery with Medibank found.
But it’s the deteriorating mental health of some of the youngest and most vulnerable members of our population – Gen Z – that’s sounding the alarm for experts.
Those born between 1997 and 2012 “are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the influence our society is having on mental health”, Beyond Blue clinical psychologist Dr Luke Martin said.
“This generation is living through a time of compounding stressors, uncertainty and disruption that is clearly having an impact,” Dr Martin said.
“It’s all they know … and it’s concerning.”
Australia is in the grips of a mental health crisis, and people are struggling to know who to turn to, especially our younger generations. Can We Talk? is a News Corp awareness campaign, in partnership with Medibank, equipping Aussies with the skills needed to have the most important conversation of their life.
Statistics show the mental health of young Australians has been in decline for more than a decade. In 2007, 26 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds had a mental illness. By 2021, the rate had increased to 39 per cent.
“Mental health is the illness of young people,” youth mental health organisation Orygen’s chief research officer, Professor Eóin Killackey, said.
That Gen Z is “experiencing more distress and more illness than other cohorts have in the past is (data) that’s showing up in a whole range of ways – through school counsellors, referrals to headspace, people seeing their GP”, Prof Killackey said.
“If you are young now and you’re looking ahead, the obstacles that you know you’ve got to overcome seem bigger than perhaps what they were in the past.”
More than three in five (69 per cent) of respondents agreed both that young adults today experience more difficulties with their mental health compared to earlier generations, and that navigating life in 2025 involves a wider and more intense set of challenges than those faced by their predecessors.
Given the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, money and financial issues were, unsurprisingly, the greatest of those stressors, affecting 48 per cent of the population across all demographics, indicating widespread angst over economic stability. Close behind, 46 per cent of respondents reported stress, and 41 per cent anxiety, as the most significant negative influences on their mental health, reflecting the general mental strain being experienced by many.
At the moment, financial concerns are the great equaliser, regardless of age, clinical psychologist Amanda Gordon said, but are a particularly “big deal” for Gen Z.
Nearly 40 per cent of young Australians reported feeling “behind” financially, or guilty for spending their money.
“Young people who are earning young people’s wages have every reason to be concerned, because it costs just as much to feed a young person as it does to feed an older person, but often you’re paid less because you’re new in the workplace or you’re living on student allowance or you’re getting pocket money, whatever it might be,” Ms Gordon said.
As well as those issues common to all Australians, Gen Z specifically face intense stress from academic and early career pressures, amplified by social media and high societal expectations, and reported often feeling lost, directionless, or lacking in purpose.
“And the impact of personal and global events – there is a sense in many young people that they’ve been let down by previous generations and now the world is a mess and they’re going to be left to clean it up,” Ms Gordon said.
“I think that’s part of the anxiety that young people feel about big issues outside their control – and that leads to a sense of helplessness. And psychologists know that helplessness is a significant player in the reduction of mental wellbeing.”
The one burden that sets Gen Z apart from those who came before is the permanent fixture of social media in their day-to-day – something they’ve “never had a life without … and therefore have always been vulnerable to”, Ms Gordon said.
It’s a factor that cannot be overlooked when assessing the diminishing mental health rates of young Australians, Dr Martin said, given the “complicated” relationship between the two.
“Tech is a double-edged sword that can actually be protective for the mental health of young people when it helps them find safe and supportive online communities,” he said.
“But we also know it can come with harms associated with exposure to abusive or hateful content, unhelpful social comparisons, and an opportunity cost that passive use to endlessly scroll takes away from time doing other activities that are good for mental health like sleeping, physical activity, and face-to-face connection.”
Though the majority of Australians felt confident managing their own mental health and wellbeing, almost one in four (22 per cent) said they weren’t – Gen Z chief among them.
Respondents who described their mental wellbeing as “below average” also felt significantly less capable in taking care of their mental health. Conversely, 67 per cent of Gen Z and 62 per cent of Millennials wanted to reach out to someone to discuss their mental wellbeing, but didn’t.
Discrimination and stigma around mental health has been reduced – in large part thanks to the efforts of Gen Z, who Prof Killackey said are “definitely less afraid to discuss their mental health than any generation before”. But, he continued, “a real tension” remains between this awareness-raising and young people being able to get the care they actually need.
“People are very aware of what’s going on for them – at least they have the language to describe it – but at the moment in Australia, trying to access help is pretty difficult,” Prof Killackey said.
“We don’t have enough workforce, there’s waiting lists often at many mental health services.”
As well as social policies that address young people’s basic needs, Dr Martin said a “paradigm shift” is necessary to “move us upstream to address the root causes of (their) distress”.
“We can’t keep waiting for young people to become seriously unwell before we step into help,” he said.
“There needs to be a broadening of the workforce so that people can get the right type of support for where they are, which will ease the pressure off the acute end of treatment.
“Our mental health system is already stretched and crisis-driven, and it will continue to struggle to meet increasing demand. We need to take prevention more seriously.”
An optimist by his own admission, Prof Killackey is confident the rates of poor mental health among young Australians will improve – or at least stabilise – in the near future.
“Every generation that comes along has to contend with circumstances that they didn’t create; Gen Z is growing into maturity in a world that they didn’t create, and that’s the challenge,” he said.
“But my optimism comes because I actually also believe deeply in the resilience of people, and if you look at some of the things that are sort of pro-good mental health.
“Compared to when I grew up, people listen to their friends talk about their emotional state more, and, particularly for people who don’t have super high levels of mental distress, that might be all they need (to help). And that generation is really good at doing that.”
Though it will take some “new approaches”, Dr Martin agreed that Australians “must remain hopeful that we can turn things around”.
“Anytime I listen to young people talk, I feel optimistic because they’ve got a pretty good handle on what the problems they’re facing are and what the solutions might be,” he said.
“We just need to get better at listening to them.”
Originally published as ‘It’s all they know’: Generation of Australians whose mental health is suffering most
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