The mental health of young people is almost visibly unravelling

For youth, the enduring risk to their wellbeing during the pandemic has been managing their mental health. Significant increases in suicidal thoughts, self-harm, anxiety, depression and eating disorders are all alarmingly consistent themes when you look at the toll the pandemic is taking on our young people. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age highlighted the issue locally on Monday and reinforced what leading international research has also found.

In mid-2021 the Journal of the American Medical Association published research charted the impact of the pandemic on the health of young people. It showed that even in the first year of the pandemic one in four young people worldwide were experiencing clinically elevated depression symptoms, while one in five were experiencing elevated anxiety symptoms.

A pandemic is a perfect recipe for a crisis in youth mental health.Credit: Rodger Cummins

Alarmingly, the research concluded elevated mental health concerns were double pre-pandemic estimates and increasing over time. We know young people were already under immense mental health distress before the pandemic began and now, as we stretch into the third year of our COVID-19 existence, we see their psychological welfare almost visibly unravelling.

Young people are designed to be active, social beings – separating from their families, bonding with their peers and exploring the world. Nature calls them to take risks, gather with others their own age and embrace life. Living should be full of firsts for young people and the chance to stake claims to new independence with travel, jobs and friendships.

Simply, everything they are intended to do at the most human of levels is exactly everything which is denied during a pandemic with work closures, cancelled milestones, isolation and the ongoing dread of uncertainty – even as restrictions lift – a perfect recipe for a crisis in youth mental health.

Clinical psychologists, and all our colleagues working in mental health, are today bracing for ever-increasing rates of mental illness among young people.

Fast-tracked services delivering care almost immediately can be implemented through existing accessible and low-cost services, such as headspace and Head to Health. But the care must be high quality, with mental health experts such as clinical psychologists providing leadership to teams of mental health staff including trainees, registrars and registered psychologists.

While funding for mental health is growing, we have yet to address the huge shortfall in training capacity for the next generation of clinical psychologists. Today, the enormous demand for urgent injections into youth mental health services come as an overwhelmed and under-resourced workforce struggles to meet client need and serious issues around access and equity to care are highlighted.

Families in suburbs around Brisbane, Melbourne or Sydney may lament the difficulty of accessing mental health care, however, anyone who cares to head a few hours’ drive out of any major city will discover the picture is dire.

We know access to most kinds of healthcare is affected by where you live, and this is particularly true if you need high-level mental health services from a clinical psychologist or other expert professional but happen to live in a rural or regional area.

Attracting highly trained mental health workers out of the cities to support demand and need in rural communities is an elusive piece of the puzzle still missing from our COVID youth mental health planning.

The Australian Clinical Psychologists Association has called for schemes designed to financially reward medical and nursing graduates who live and work in rural and remote areas to be extended to clinical psychologists so some of the gap may be met. More broadly, it is time for mental health experts to be more meaningfully represented in government planning around the pandemic and how we might provide the missing capacity in mental health services.

Compassionate and responsive governments must provide the supports, mental health resourcing, certainty, and clear intentions with immediacy to support youth through this protracted pandemic and importantly, they must look to sustain and improve this commitment over the long term, such as sustainable funding for increased training places for clinical psychologists. Our research is telling us while ever the pandemic continues so will the overwhelming need.

Professor Caroline Hunt is president of the Australian Clinical Psychology Association and has worked in the field of anxiety disorders for more than 20 years. She is an expert in youth mental health and holds senior roles at the University of Sydney, including in the School of Psychology and the Brain and Mind Centre.

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