Mental Health

This pitch focused on intergenerational trauma and the lack of cultural awareness within mental health services. The group spoke of how existing mental health support services typically lack the necessary competencies to understand how intergenerational trauma affects young peoples’ social and emotional development and overall wellbeing. Contributing to this is that the clinical mental health sector is typically built on the Western healthcare system and is not always culturally safe or appropriate for young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds. They spoke of the compounding impacts of racism and discrimination which also contributes to social distress and feelings of isolation. For young people, this can be challenging to navigate when understanding and conversations about anxiety, trauma, and depression can be highly stigmatised within certain communities.

Solutions:

1. Culturally responsive training must be mandatory in all workplaces but especially for mental health service providers.
2. Mental health staff cohorts need to be more diverse and include those who are BIPOC, neuro-diverse, LGBTQIA+, disabled and/or have lived experienced of intergenerational trauma to contribute to a more conducive and responsive environment for sharing experiences, communicating needs, and healing.
3. Individuals with these various intersections must lead the conversation, co-designing programs and informing best practice.
4. Recognition that one size does not fit all. For instance, youth coming out of the justice system need targeted support to facilitate reconnections, to navigate their trauma and find pathways to become active citizens.

The QLD team’s pitch highlighted the issue that young people from refugee and migrant background often share the repercussions of displacement and dispossession, often not by choice. This is exacerbated by experiences of racism that can cause trauma, as well as feelings of anxiety and isolation. Furthermore, the migrant and refugee experience is usually accompanied with a huge existential burden and expectations to be high achieving and conventionally successful, which can be overwhelming for young people.

The key message of their pitch was that mental health support is inaccessible to multicultural young people as mental health services are not well-equipped to address these complexities of the migrant and refugee experience. The solutions provided are on a short-term basis and there is no real ongoing care.

Solutions:

1. Mental health services need to create safe spaces for young people be vulnerable and feel connected to one another.
2. Services need more multicultural youth in positions of influence to advocate for themselves and more inclusive health professionals to provide culturally sensitive care and who can relate and empathise with the stories of young migrants and refugees.
3. Culturally responsive practices should be at the heart of mental health care and should have a more personal dimension, with meaningful conversations free from judgement. In this way, cultural competency training can be purposeful and sincere as opposed from a task done to tick a box.

While acknowledging that “cultural competency” training is necessary to be better informed and deliver more culturally responsive mental health support, the VIC team highlighted that mental health and the professional development in this area is informed by settler colonial structures. Therefore, these systems of knowledge must be viewed critically and recognise their tendency to exclude, and marginalise BIPOC young people.

Beyond the othering and objectification of young migrants and refugees in the clinical mental health sector, they shared that young people struggle to overcome the stigma entrenched in their communities and often lack general mental health literacy. In addition, there are practical factors that make mental health services inaccessible. These include financial barriers, and transportation barriers. The VIC team also emphasised that a one size fits all approach to youth mental health is detrimental because every individual and community has different intersecting experiences. The VIC team advocated for lived experience-led solutions beyond conventional clinical practices in the mental health space.

Solutions: 

1. Key mental health services should be brought to young people through existing structures such as schools. Because of existing relationships of trust with students, schools have great potential to foster a culturally safe environment for young people. When supported this way, young people do not have to face additional barriers such as family and community stigma or even practical barriers.  Providing support to young people within schools provides early intervention, mental health literacy and has the potential to improve mental health outcomes for youth in general.
2. Youth mental health services need to be delivered in a sustained and holistic way, with expertise drawn from community and trusted elders to allow mental health issues to be dealt through cultural and community ties to promote deeper connections, raise awareness and destigmatise mental health struggles.