Grieving mother’s plea for mental health reform on behalf of family ‘shattered’ after the Bondi Junction stabbing attack

The families left to grieve are the “collateral damage” of the Bondi stabbing rampage, says Elizabeth Young. While some have support, others are left calling help numbers that go unanswered.

The grieving mother of a Bondi Junction attack victim will issue an urgent plea to governments to fix gaps in Australia’s mental health system, revealing her own family had vastly different levels of support depending on where they lived.

Three months since Elizabeth Young’s daughter Jade was killed in a stabbing rampage that took the lives of six people, the Sydney mother has travelled to Canberra to lend her voice to calls from mental health experts for more long-term and equitable funding.

Ms Young said while Jade was the primary victim of the April attack, her immediate family in three households — two in NSW and one in Tasmania — were the “collateral damage”.

Mourning Jade as a wife, mother-of-two girls, daughter and big sister, Ms Young said the family was “emerging” from the overwhelming grief with the help of specialist mental health practitioners, but she revealed “not all of us have been so fortunate”.

“Within hours of (Jade’s) death, in the hideous aftermath, our NSW families were given unconditional support, we were introduced to our police support person, we were guided through the first steps of recovery,” she said.

Elizabeth Young who lost her daughter Jade during the April Bondi Junction stabbing attack is visiting Canberra to call for long-term equitable funding. Picture: Martin Ollman

“But … our son, who lives in Tasmania with his family, received no such treatment.

“They firstly had to find a GP, then negotiate their own specialist support, paying out of their own pockets.”

Ms Young said her 11-year-old niece and nine-year-old nephew could not get into the only local child psychologist as their “books were closed”, and the mental health hotline they were advised to use “rang out

Mother-of-two Jade Young, 47 was killed in April. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

The experience prompted her to research the gaps in mental health services and Ms Young said she was “appalled” by the failure of successive governments to act on the dozens of recommendations made across multiple reports.

“We need a co-ordinated, national approach to mental health care. So that no matter where you live, you should be able to receive the care that you need,” she said.

Ms Young also wants the federal, state and territory governments to fulfil their pledge to hold a national mental health ministers meeting to discuss joint reforms.

“Three months after Bondi, no date and no agenda has been set for this meeting,” she said.

“Please I beg you as the voice of three shattered households, please actually do something about the discrepancies, the disparities, the inconsistencies in current mental health funding and management.”

Ms Young has thrown her support behind a joint statement signed by more than a dozen organisations, including the Black Dog Institute, Australian Society for Psychological Medicine, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and Bipolar Australia, asking Labor to also include mental health in the upcoming National Health Reform Agreement being negotiated with the states.

The group wants the levels of government to agree on a “long-term road map” and funding for reforms to close the service gap for Australians in the “missing middle” as well as those with more complex mental health needs.