Service For Teens Stalls
Newcastle Herald
Thursday May 18, 2006
DEMAND for adolescent mental health services in the Hunter has forced the region's only service for teenagers to close its books to all but the most urgent cases.
Hunter New England Health's community adolescent team based at The Junction, as of this week, is seeing only young people with acute mental health problems at risk of self-harm or suicide.All other cases are being referred to school counsellors, community services, GPs and psychologists in private practice.Hunter New England Health child and adolescent mental health services clinical director Philip Hazell said the community adolescent team had about 600 referrals a year.The team has eight staff to deal with the case load and there is a substantial waiting list.Professor Hazell said the problem was not so much the result of a spike in cases as a very steady demand for services."There's always a high demand for adolescent mental health services," he said."I think they've just got to the point where they're not keeping up, forcing them to [set priorities]."Professor Hazell said measures to address the bottleneck in the system could include increasing the number of staff and resources.Reconfiguring services so that children with chronic problems stayed with their existing service rather than being referred to the adolescent team once they turned 13 might be considered.A staff member, who did not wish to be named, said the increase in adolescent mental health cases was attributable to growing pressure on families and young people, particularly in "transition times" in their life and anxiety over what the future held for them.Technology had created extra challenges, with cyber bullying becoming more common.Some adolescents had used the web to post messages about hurting themselves.
© 2006 Newcastle Herald