Congratulations
Congratulations!
Rion Morgan
Rion Morgan
We were informed last week that Rion Morgan of Year 11 has won the prestigious Hotham Writing Prize for 2021. Rion wrote about mental health and his entry is reprinted here.
Rion will be awarded a bursary for $250. Ms Clare O’Neil MP is the Federal Member of Hotham and will be presenting Rion with his prize at an upcoming on-line event. Huge congratulations to Rion for this success and for writing about what is such a prescient issue in this troubled time.
Hotham Writing Prize:
What matters to young people? by Rion Morgan
Society is starting to acknowledge the pressing issue of mental health and its real effects.
Mental health is an issue that too many young people face, with mental health issues rising more needs to be done.
Mental health has a large impact on a person and the people around them, this is especially true for young people with 20% of adolescents having some sort of mental health issue each year. Mental health is a leading cause of death in young people from the age of 12-19 making up 11% of total deaths due to suicide. This statistic is increasing with young people needing to deal with more and more pressure. Australia's young people are the most vulnerable in society to mental issues due to the lack of support built up around them, as well as not knowing ourselves how to deal with these issues because of the age of these peoples. 50% of mental health problems are established by the age of 14 and 75% of mental health problems by the age of 24. Mental Health overwhelmingly affects young people. This has a snowball effect into people's later lives as well as continuing this cycle of mental health problems. We simply cannot ignore these statistics and believe that this issue is too big or too hard or simply as some say normal.
The Government has acknowledged that young Australians are struggling with mental health by funding mental health services such as head space and others, however this approach lacks the ability to individually and seriously help an individual. While these broad approaches help to guild lesser serious mental health problems in the right direction real action is lacking. Schools or institutions have this ability to connect with young Australians on an individual level however this is often lost due to a lack of resources and funding or by the way these institutions deal with mental health issues. The funding of resources for these institutions is key as well as programs set out to help educate staff or officials in that school or institution on what approach or how to deal with someone taking that first step and asking for help. This first step is often the hardest with only 31% of young women and 13% of young men with mental health problems having sought any professional help. This is due to the distrust by young people in professional help and the complex system in acquiring this type of help. The easier the access the more common this sort of reaching out can become. Actions towards simplifying and making it easier to get a professional helps decrease mental health issues across the board.
Australia's young people are increasingly struggling with mental health, this is a large issue that our country must face to improve as a society. With this issue being extremely common in young people it is key to focus funding in schools and institutions allowing for more individual based help this can only be achieved through the distribution of resources to these schools and education as well as educating these people on how to deal with let's say a student coming to them with their mental health issues. Another way to tackle this problem is to simplify the way in which young people can access professional help. Mental health is important to young people and is an increasing issue that seems as if it is here to stay. We must change this as a nation starting with our governments leading the charge.
Source of statistics