“I run a youth charity and young women are in mental health crisis. Here's what we can do about it”.

As the Chief Executive of a youth charity working in the mental health and wellbeing sector, people ask me all the time: are kids really doing it tougher these days? 

The answer is a resounding and evidence-based ‘yes’. 

And our young women are struggling more than most.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest update to the National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing in July. It’s a country-wide snapshot of the prevalence and impact of mental health conditions in our community and in this round, more than 5,500 Australians participated in the survey between December 2020 and July 2021.

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The survey found that almost half of young women aged between 16 and 24 were living with a mental illness in the year leading up to the survey, compared to roughly a third of young men and a fifth of all Australians. Young women ranked higher for disorders such as anxiety, depression, self-harm and disordered eating. The last time the survey was conducted in 2008, a quarter of young people – 1 in 4 - were living with a mental illness. 

As if that wasn’t bad enough, now almost 1 in 2 young women and 1 in 3 young men are living with a mental illness. So yes, they are doing it tougher these days.

What my team and I see every day working with thousands of young Australians matches the statistics. 

They are consistently coming to our programs with higher Kessler Scale (K10) scores, the measure that we and the Australian Bureau of Statistics use to measure psychological distress. 

By the way - like golf, higher on K10 is bad. 

A young woman I coach through our graduate engagement program told me recently, “it’s not often I speak up, but with everything going on and trying to support my friends, and family and myself, it’s a struggle, and it’s overwhelming and exhausting.”

So, what’s going on? 

Look, there are a lot of reasons why we’re seeing these trends. 

As a non-profit organisation, we work in communities where young people are facing very real everyday barriers to success. Many of them are experiencing troubles in the home, a lack of access to support in their communities and often they’re working part-time after school and shouldering family caring duties as well. 

And yet, despite these challenges - like myself who grew up in very similar circumstances- these young people are some of the most optimistic, kind and future-focused people I’ve had the privilege to meet. 

So while it’s not a given that socio-economic disadvantage leads to mental ill health, it sure increases their risk, and we see that in the numbers.

What young people tell me is affecting them is fear – fear of judgement through rising social media influence; fear of failure from a lack of basic human communication and confidence skills; and fear of the future with greater uncertainty arising from climate change, the rapidly transforming world of work, erosion of trust in our social institutions and then throw in a global pandemic. 

They can’t imagine what their life will be in a week, let alone set longer-term goals and strive for fulfilling futures.

And while some days it feels like we’re just sweeping back the ocean of need, there is much we can all do individually and collectively to help reverse these trends.  

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Increase ‘protective’ factors and decrease ‘risk' factors.

The research shows us that for adolescents, increasing protective factors such as helping them to amp up their self-esteem and communication skills – often referred to as social-emotional learning skills - while decreasing risk factors such as the need for external approval, can help them shift away from having a high risk of mental ill health, sometimes quite quickly. 

Start with the young women in your life and yourself   

Let’s start local, with the young women in your life. And with yourself. 

Like chia seeds in your superfood smoothie, these tips will help to boost the five ingredients of adolescent wellbeing.

1. Engage in an activity that makes you lose track of time and forget about everything else, like volunteering in your community for a cause that’s important to you.

2. Persevere in achieving something that matters to you by imagining something that will make you feel happy in future, and setting small achievable goals to get there – getting a dream job perhaps? Or establishing a thriving herb garden. 

3. Optimism is built through stepping outside your comfort zone with small acts of bravery that increase your self-confidence and leave you believing that things will work out, no matter what comes your way. You can start by setting yourself a simple challenge to identify at least three of your strengths and read them to yourself every day; or to say hello to one person you don’t know and increase your target by one more person each day.

4. Connect with others on the good and the tough stuff. Celebrate your wins proudly and share the credit with those who helped you succeed. Normalise and work through tough times by talking about them with people you trust or an independent professional such as a Beyond Blue counsellor.

5. Happiness can be a short-term feeling that we get by doing something fun, but what we’re really aiming for is long-term happiness. It’s that long-lasting state of feeling good about life that is tough enough to withstand bad days or when things go wrong. Spend 5-10 minutes thinking about what long-term happiness means to you, and what you can do now that would help you achieve long-term happiness. You might like to write your thoughts down, walk and talk through it with a friend, or get creative and make a visual representation of what happiness means to you.

Build healthy relationships with at least one trusted adult outside of the family home

A word of advice for the parents of young women out there, from an aunty to 14 kids and mother of none –do your daughter a favour and help her build healthy relationships with at least one trusted adult outside of the family home, as well as with you. It could be a sports coach, teacher, work colleague, neighbour or even a formal mentor or coach. 

A young student told me recently that she didn’t want to tell her mum about her severe anxiety because she didn’t want to burden her, even though her mum is a qualified youth worker and she knows her mum could help her. There's something about human development and the teenager-parent dynamic that works hard to prevent them from communicating openly and deeply with you. It’s not personal. But it’s a risk. 

Lots of great non-profits offer free mentoring for teenagers right across Australia for this very reason, such as Raise Foundation and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Australia.  

Investment in mental healthcare services alone is not working: we must focus on prevention. 

Desmond Tutu said, “there comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in”. 

Australia’s biggest private funders of youth mental health Future Generation Global recently conducted a review into their social investment strategy which found that despite a steady increase in government expenditure on mental healthcare services over the past three decades, the rates of mental ill-health, self-harm and suicide among young people continue to rise. 

Put simply, the current focus on mental healthcare or treatment alone is not working. 

“Prevention is an area that has been largely neglected in mental health policy, attracting only 1 per cent of combined government mental health expenditure. We need to start tackling the root causes behind the alarming increase in youth mental health conditions, distress and suicidal ideation,” Future Generation Global Chief Executive Officer Caroline Gurney said at the time. 

And they are doing just that - announcing 14 new social impact partners across Australia including non-profits such as Youth Opportunities to deliver evidence-based personal leadership programs to thousands of young Australians each year with significant mental health outcomes for young people.

This impressive collection of non-profits will share in millions of dollars of funding over the next 3 years to shift the needle on youth mental health.  

And this matters because we know programs such as Youth Opportunities’ 10-week personal leadership program delivered a 28 per cent reduction in the number of graduates at high risk of developing a mental health disorder last year. 

Advocate for evidence-based wellbeing and social emotional learning skills education 

Thinking globally now. At every chance we get, we must advocate for evidence-based wellbeing and social emotional learning skills education in our schools and in our workplaces, particularly those with high proportions of young women such as hospitality and retail. 

Consider where you can give philanthropically of your time and talent through volunteering, or of your treasure through donations to evidence-based programs that support the wellbeing of young women. 

Seek help from a trained professional. 

And of course, if you or a young woman in your life is in mental health distress then you need to seek help from people trained to provide appropriate support. 

If we break a leg, we go to the doctor. We accept that it could take months to heal, and that even if we do the prescribed rehab exercises we may never fully heal and be the same again. 

Mental health distress is the same. Our friends, colleagues and loved ones can encourage and support us on the healing journey as part of our wellbeing team of course. But frankly most of us do not have the technical skills required to truly address these serious disorders sustainably.

Erin Faehrmann is the Chief Executive of Youth Opportunities Australia and a fierce advocate for youth.

If you think you may be experiencing depression or another mental health problem, please contact your general practitioner. If you're based in Australia, 24-hour support is available through Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyondblue on 1300 22 4636.

 Feature Image: Supplied

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