Youth Mental Health—a Response To National’s Proposed Welfare Plan

National’s new unemployment policy is too simplistic an approach to work on such a complex and complicated issue, says the NZ Association of Counsellors (NZAC).

Newly elected president Sarah Maindonald says a simple carrot and stick approach as National is proposing won’t work.

She says long-term unemployment of the type National is trying to address is often rooted in deep-seated issues that arise much earlier in a person’s life.

Ms Maindonald says 21 per cent of young people identified in the University of Auckland’s regular Youth Health Survey suffer significant psychological distress.

“Those young people are struggling with homelessness, mental health and addiction challenges, and they need robust physical and mental health and wellbeing interventions,” Ms Maindonald says.

She says a more valuable, but longer-term policy, would be to put in place better preventative supports targeting the teenage years.

The Ministry of Education commissioned research in 2020 to gauge the effectiveness of school counselling in this space.

The research confirmed counselling is an effective intervention for young people who are struggling with mental wellbeing issues that might impact their ability later to gain productive and ongoing work.

“But there’s been very little tagged funding invested in this area to increase counselling staffing in schools,” she said.

“In some cases you’ve got bigger schools with one counsellor servicing over 1,000 students and that’s just untenable.

“At the same time, the issues that some of these young people are presenting with are getting increasingly complex and severe, and they can have life-long impacts unless they are addressed at an early age.

“Our young people these days are often struggling with ongoing family violence, family separation, grief and loss issues, bullying, drug and alcohol issues and, of course, the mental health issues and anxiety generated by Covid.

“We shouldn’t try and downplay the impacts on these young people and we can’t afford to write them off.

"So, yes, we do need sensible policies to address unemployment issues – that’s the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

“But let’s also have policies in place that provide a fence at the top of that cliff, and investing properly in youth mental health would be a great start.”

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