After suffering from an eating disorder, Aucklander Jade Varney began advocating for better mental health services for young people. She tells Alex Spence she’s dismayed by the lack of progress nationally.
One day near
As the election campaign ended, Auckland secondary school student Jade Varney took a break from studying for her final year exams and looked at political parties’ election promises about improving health mentality of young people.
She didn’t see much that inspired her.
A new minister of mental health? A few additional training places for psychologists? A $20 million “innovation fund” for community providers?
“It’s great,” Varney said. “But I really don’t think (youth mental health) is a priority.
“It’s like the words ‘mental health’ are used to keep people happy. And that really makes me angry.
At 17, Varney was too young to vote in last Saturday’s general election, but she is more invested than anyone in the policies the next government will implement in this area.
Varney is recovering from an eating disorder that has seriously affected his mental and physical health in recent years. This experience inspired her to campaign for better support and treatment for other children and young people suffering from mental illness and distress.
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On October 29, Varney will run half of the Auckland Marathon to raise money for Mike King’s charity, I Am Hope. She will carry hundreds of stones in a backpack during the race in memory of young people who died by suspected suicide. (At the time of writing, she Give a small page had raised nearly $1,800.)
Varney is one of a growing number of young Kiwis who have experienced mental health issues at a crucial time in their lives.
Between 2012 and 2019, according to the landmark Youth2000 study, the number of New Zealand secondary school students with significant symptoms of depression increased from 13 to 23 per cent. Nearly a quarter of students in the latest survey said they had self-harmed in the past year, while 21 percent said they had seriously considered suicide.
The reasons for these alarming trends are not well understood, but are thought to be the product of several complex and intersecting factors, including social determinants, changes in parenting, and the rapid adoption of smartphones and social media. The Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the problems of many young people and triggered new episodes of distress and mental illness in those who had never experienced it.
As the Herald exhibited last year in his Great Minds seriesThese sharp increases in rates of mental illness, self-harm and distress have not been offset by an adequate expansion of government-backed initiatives to prevent or treat these conditions, according to health professionals, researchers, officials , parents and young people. .
While Labor has committed around $2 billion to improve mental health since 2019, services for children and adolescents remain fragmented, inconsistent, difficult to access and difficult to navigate.
Every year, thousands of adolescents spend hours in hospital emergency rooms after incidents of self-harm and suicide attempts. Some patients spend many months waiting for psychological therapies essential to their recovery. The prescribing of antidepressants and other psychiatric medications to under-20s has increased significantly.
For Varney, the first major experience of mental illness began during the Covid lockdown in the fall of 2020.
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Suddenly isolated from school and her friends, Varney, then 14, says she found herself going down a diet and exercise rabbit hole. This was partly inspired by viral trends on social media, where she saw young women glamorizing extreme calorie restriction. “This is what I have to do if I want to lose weight,” she thought.
The lockdown ended but Varney’s weight loss continued and soon people started to worry. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with anorexia.
Varney’s recovery came only after intensive therapy with a private specialist, a two-month hiatus from school and immense emotional strain for her and her family.
She was fortunate, she says, to be able to seek treatment from one of the leading clinicians in the field in Auckland.
Other people she knew with eating disorders went through the public system, didn’t receive the same quality and consistency of care, and had to endure more difficult recoveries because of it.
The disparity inspired Varney to create a petition calling on the government to improve mental health services For the young.
After the petition garnered more than 12,000 signatures online, boosted by King’s support, it was presented to Parliament by the law’s leader, David Seymour, local MP for Varney. Varney has been invited on television and radio to discuss the subject.
She continued to press this issue last year as one of the 120 young deputies of the 2022 Youth Parliament. “Ignored, forgotten and neglected, those are the three words that come to mind when I first think of youth mental health services in New Zealand,” Varney told the House.
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Because of his activism, Varney says he has met many young people across the country who were unable to access help when they needed it.
“The recurring theme I heard from these people was that they weren’t able to find help,” she says.
Labor’s investments in mental health services included some positive initiatives for young people, such as the Mana Ake program in schools and the Piki therapy program for 18-25 year olds in Wellington.
But much of the focus has been on developing early interventions in primary care that are not specifically designed for young people.
The youth services that have been created tend to be restricted to specific groups or locations and are not universally available. And their expansion has been slow, hampered by staff shortages, funding constraints and other obstacles plaguing the sector.
Varney is frustrated by the huge gaps that remain in prevention, early intervention and specialized treatment for young people. And she is not convinced, despite all the promises of politicians, that any party has a comprehensive vision to resolve the crisis.
During the election campaign, National promised to appoint a dedicated mental health minister; establish a $20 million innovation fund for community projects (he cited Gumboot Friday, King’s online counseling services for young people, as an example of the kinds of things he wants to encourage); and recruit and train more clinical staff such as psychiatrists and psychologists.
Act, its expected partner in government, has committed to creating a new national agency, Mental Health and Addiction New Zealand (MHANZ), to dedicate $2 billion in annual spending to mental health services. Act says it wants users to be able to choose between service providers and would allow MHANZ to contract with those providers and monitor their effectiveness.
Varney says mental health is the top priority for his contemporaries and they are frustrated that their sense of urgency is not shared by policymakers in Wellington.
“It’s such an important question,” she said. “We are literally the future of the country. And virtually no prioritization or priority has been given to our aid.
“I am very worried about the generation below mine,” she continues. “Because I think if nothing changes soon, nothing will change for a long time. These systems will only continue to deteriorate. The generations that follow me will have no foundation to stand on.
Alex Spence is a senior investigative journalist based in Auckland. Before joining the Heraldhe spent 17 years in London where he worked for The temperature, Politico and BuzzFeed News. He can be reached at alex.spence@nzme.co.nz or by SMS or secure messaging Signal on 027 235 8834.
