Can We Talk: Sunday Telegraph’s campaign for more mental health resources at our schools

NSW schools desperately require an increase in the number of student counsellors while teachers need training in mental health first aid to address the alarming increase in youth suicide. Get behind our campaign.

• Nine students lost in Sydney high school suicide ‘cluster’
• Tumut teen suicide victim let down by the system

Struggling students urgently need more school counsellors and teachers trained in mental health first aid if NSW is to address alarming rates of youth suicide.

The state’s youth suicide rates are at their highest level in 15 years, with 54 people under the age of 18 dying by suicide in 2016 and 2017.

But only an estimated 1085 counsellors are working in NSW public schools and experts warn there needs to be a significant increase to arrest spiralling levels of youth ­distress.

Leigh Day, the mother of Ethan Day, believes her son was let down by the lack of mental health resources and follow-up care both in the local health district and at Tumut High School, which he attended until the end of 2018.

Ethan Day tragically took his own life in 2019. Picture: Supplied by Leigh Day.

Ethan took his own life last year.

“I really feel like the system let Ethan down,” Ms Day, 51, said.

“I don’t think that there was the follow-up. I just don’t think there was that support.”

Some large public high schools are serviced by part-time resources or share counsellors with other schools despite having student bodies numbering well over 1000.

The Sunday Telegraph is calling on the state government to increase the number of school counsellors to at least one for every 500 students.

These were levels agreed to in 2018 but never reached.

We are also calling for mental health first aid to be taught to all current and future NSW teachers.

Mental health first aid is a critical skill set for teachers in knowing how to listen to struggling students, refer them on to appropriate care and help avoid yet another tragedy.

The courses cost as little as $200 per teacher but most schools say they can’t afford to train all — or even most — of their faculty. The push is supported by the executive director of youth mental health organisation Orygen, Professor Patrick McGorry.

“Counsellors in schools should be clinical psychologists and there should be a lot more of them in schools than there are now — but aiming for one in every 500 students is a step in the right direction,” Prof McGorry said.

“Mental health first aid has also been shown to have positive outcomes for teachers who do the course, although I would like to see more input from young people in the ­design of the program in the future.”