Mental Health Crisis: A Liberal Approach

Ask any parent what is most important to them, and among their highest priorities is certain to be the wellbeing of their children. Ask any Australian, parent or otherwise, what is the measure of a good society, and the welfare of children will surely rank among the most important attributes.

It strikes me as strange then that our party has given little attention to a decline in the wellbeing of Australian children that is nothing short of catastrophic. In just two decades, the rate of mental illness among Australian youth has increased by 50%. Hospital cases of self-harm among teenage girls have doubled. One in six adolescents will experience depression. And those are just the clinical cases – the same environmental causes of declining mental health are impacting the wellbeing of all children. Put simply, childhood has become more stressful, more hopeless and more lonely.

This problem is by no means unique to Australia – the same trend is present around the world. Governments have tried and largely failed to reverse it. Even Finland, with their much-lauded education system which prioritises holistic student wellbeing over academic performance has failed to make inroads.

Which brings me to my main point: this issue is the kind of problem that the Liberal Party needs to focus on right now. In the words of JFK: not because it is easy, but because it is hard. And, because it is a problem that goes to the heart of Liberal values, one where the solution lies with communities, not government services.

So far, the response to the mental health crisis has been to focus on improving access to treatment. Initiatives such as the Headspace program, established by the Howard government, are world leading and have a massive impact. They are also political winners – an easy target for politicians to throw money at and be seen as doing something. But they don’t do anything to address the far more important and intractable problem: how do we fix the environment our children are growing up in so that they don’t become mentally ill in the first place. We need to stop seeing mental illness as individual cases to be treated individually, and start seeing it as a societal problem in need of societal solutions.

The problem is a complex and multifaceted one, and the blame is usually put on a combination of technology, social media, academic pressure and climate catastrophising. While these factors no doubt play a role, I think we have focussed too heavily on what has been added to childhood, and overlooked what has been lost.

Participation in community and religious groups, team sports and volunteering has been steadily declining across the board. We are no longer a nation of joiners – and so neither are our children. You cannot manufacture hope. You cannot buy belonging. You cannot teach purpose in a classroom. These are the priceless gifts that come from participation in face-to-face, for-purpose community. Without them, we are left papering over an existential hole with therapy and medication. I think the great lie of our time is that the solutions to our deepest personal problems can be found in turning inward – in fact the oppositive is true.

This is good news for Liberals, because all evidence suggests that the very things we value most: strong communities and a sense of civic duty, are exactly the things that are most needed in the lives of young people. While Labor is inclined to simply throw more money at the problem, this is one problem that simply can’t be solved that way.

One program which has been shown to work is the National Citizen Service in the UK, launched by David Cameron in 2011 and recently shut down by the Labour government. It was a summer holiday program combining outdoor challenges, skill-building, leadership development and community volunteering. There were substantial improvements in anxiety, sense of purpose, and many participants continued volunteering after the program. It was expensive, but nothing compared to what is spent on healthcare more broadly, and unlike the vast sums spent on end-of-life care, the benefits are lifelong.

A program like this may or may not be right for Australia, but these are the kinds of initiatives we should be looking at – face to face programs that build relationships and a sense of civic duty. They could be classroom based, implemented through the curriculum, or they could be extra-curricular. They could involve volunteering, sport, art, performance, political activism. Better still – we could unleash the creative power of the free market by funding programs through social impact bonds.

This is exactly the kind of issue the Liberals need to be embracing at this time: an issue which deeply impacts every Australian family, and one for which we can offer solutions that differ substantially from Labor. But it’s not just about our electoral prospects: we owe it to all Australian children to get this right, to provide them with hope and place to belong.