![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() They’re less likely to play well with other kids for example, they’re less likely to develop the resiliency that stands them in really good stead for the inevitable ups and downs of life.Ĭhildhood trauma, in particular childhood adversity, is incredibly forming and really sets a lot of the pathways that we then travel down as teenagers and adults. So, if a child is born into a world and a family environment that is highly traumatic, they’re more likely to develop more slowly, behaviourally. There is really solid research, over many decades by extremely talented people, that has shown that the first 1,000 days of life are actually really important to healthy development and healthy adulthood, not just physically but also mentally. Look, half of all adult mental health conditions actually emerge by the age of 14, we know that we can, at a population level, if we really focus on the early years and supporting families in particular, we can really change the trajectory of our mental health as a nation.Īs I said, before people get to that early adolescence or their teenage years, a lot of the brain development is formed and a lot of distress is embedded. You recently said that with half of all mental health issues emerging by the age of 14, you support the commission’s view that we must be doing more to support children, young people and their families. If it’s not you, it’s your family, it’s your colleague, it’s your boss, it’s your supplier, it’s your customer. But in fact, all of us, one in five of us will experience a mental health condition in any given year and 45 per cent of us in our lifetime. Somehow, we think about people as being different when that does happen. And sometimes it goes a bit wobbly, sometimes it’s wired differently, sometimes things happen to us in our lives that affect our thinking and our ability to cope and our psychological wellbeing. It is very different to our heart and to our lungs. Our brain is the most complex organ we have. We need to look after that physical and mental health, and treat that as parts of our whole selves, as opposed to thinking of these things individually. We somehow think that this is different, when in fact we’re all born with mental health just as we’re all born with physical health. We’re still held back by stigma, self-stigma in particular. I think one of the biggest barriers we’ve still got is the fact that we still don’t think about mental health and mental ill health or mental illness, in the same way that we think about physical health and poor physical health and physical illnesses. ![]() So, this is fundamentally about people, but it’s also about productivity and economics and actually building the kinds of services and supports in the community and in systems that actually allow people to thrive and allow people to have their best possible mental health. And don’t get me wrong, we need enough hospital beds, we need enough crisis services, but currently our balance of investment is skewed heavily towards the crisis end, which is very expensive and it’s where we actually don’t want people to get to. Really, I think it’s about rebalancing the system from being one that is heavily weighted towards the crisis end. And obviously to look, as the Productivity Commission does, at fundamental system and financing reform.Īre we actually placing the right financing incentives in the right place, so that we’re able to push better outcomes forward, rather than just pick people up when they’re really unwell? Where can we invest downstream? So that we can actually prevent a lot of mental distress, a lot of illness and we can actually get in earlier in the communities using different types of models of support, we can actually get people recovering far quicker and help people to maintain good mental health when they do recover. They’ve been licensed to look across the different parts of the system that are funded by different parts of government, to look outside of the health system, into things like housing and employment and education, which are all fundamental enablers of good mental health. I think what we’re excited about, with the Productivity Commission inquiry, is the fact that they are looking at this through not only a sort of social lens and a human lens, but also an economic and productivity lens. ![]()
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