Students, graduates called in to work on youth mental health’s desperate frontline

Hundreds of social work and psychology students have been called in to help tackle the spiralling youth mental health crisis and slash wait times.

Students and graduates will be deployed at headspace centres to help tackle the rising demand for youth mental health services.

Student and graduate mental health workers are being dispatched to frontline services across the country in an unprecedented move to cope with a rising tide of youth anxiety and psychiatric issues.

As demand for youth mental health services continues to spiral since the height of the Covid pandemic, headspace is rolling out up to 655 new workers through its Early Career Program to provide early interventions and head off more serious illnesses in the coming years.

The junior recruits include 55 social work, occupational therapy and psychology graduates who began the first of two 12-month appointments at different headspace sites in Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland and Western Australia this month.

A further 600 student clinicians will also be called in to provide supervised work towards their degrees at headspace centres over the next two years in an effort to boost young people’s access to care.

headspace chief executive officer Jason Trethowan said the largest ever cohort of early career graduates was a “watershed initiative” for Australia’s youth mental health workforce, both in terms of providing immediate support for vulnerable young people as well as securing long-term staff.

“This is a real game changer for us and sets a real solid foundation for the program,” Mr Trethowan said.

Deman for youth mental health services has spiralled due to the Covid pandemic.

“The reason for the gaps in the mental health system is we just don’t have enough people to do the work.

“You need teams of people to support a young person, particularly if they are going though a really difficult time.

“There is obviously an increasing need and number of young people reaching out, and there is certainly an additional investment from governments both state and federal over recent years. “But what everyone on the ground is saying is ‘where is the workforce coming from?’.”

The workforce boost comes three weeks after the Herald Sun revealed thousands of vulnerable young Victorians are being denied mental health care as waits stretch up to 60 days.

In Melbourne’s northwest alone it is understood 562 young people are waiting for psychiatrist and allied health appointments at headspace centres, though the situation is even more dire in regional areas.

Waiting lists for hospital treatment to address more severe psychiatric conditions has also ballooned under the pandemic.

The Early Career Program will see graduate and final year Masters and PhD students embedded in teams with senior clinicians, undertaking rotations at regional, remote and metropolitan headspace centres.

Mr Trethowan said the new youth mental health teams model mirrored the way medical care has been provided in hospitals for decades, where students and registrars work in groups under the supervision of senior clinicians.

The program has been funded by a two-year Commonwealth Government commitment, however Mr Trethowan hopes Tuesday’s budget will pave the way for an expanded reach of 150 graduates a year in all states.

“The need is obvious for us. We have a lot more young people reaching out, but it is not just the numbers reaching out, it is what they are reaching out for,” he said.

“Prior to Covid there were already lots of people reaching out for help for a range of reasons, but the return to school has been really challenging for teachers, for parents and carers - many kids have come back with increasing levels of anxiety.

“And for those who have finished school and gone into the unknown world of work or study, that has been really challenging over the last couple of years.

“The whole idea of headspace is to provide early intervention services so when someone says ‘I need to step forward and make that brave step to talk about what’s on my mind’, we want to be accessible,we want to be there for the conversation as soon as possible.”