The Front Page: Mental health crisis - Are we doing enough to help NZ's youth?

Parents are struggling to get the help they need for their children. Photo / 123RF

The harrowing story of the death of a teenage New Zealander served as a reminder of the mental health crisis quietly affecting young people around the country.

The parents of Cassandra Fausset told their story in detail over a period of months to NZ Herald investigations editor Alex Spence, offering a rare glimpse at the toll such an experience takes on a family.

"Cassandra was a 17-year-old woman from south Auckland, who was deeply loved," Spence tells the Front Page podcast.

"She was vivacious, smart, she touched the lives of many people, she was a very capable athlete... She played sports to a high level, but she was also complicated. She had been diagnosed with some mental health conditions, including anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anorexia and others. And the last two years of her life really turned into something of a nightmare for her parents."

Ultimately, her parents were unable to save her life despite their best efforts.

Fausset's story is only one of many similar cases that Spence has heard over the course of investigating this issue during the last year.

"In some ways what happened to her was not typical. Her experiences were specific, but there are commonalities in her experience with those of the other families and young people that I have interviewed. And going deep into her story allowed me to illuminate those themes in a more detailed way than I'd been able to before."

One of the main issues that Spence has identified is a gap in the support for people and their families at the acute end when people get into a period of crisis.

"This is somebody in such serious distress that they become a danger to themselves," says Spence.

"I've spoken to many families now that have had a child in that sort of distress who might be harming themselves or threatening or trying to kill themselves and they've really had a hard time finding help. Mental health services in many places are overloaded and understaffed, and they can't keep up with the demand for their services."

While the Government has significantly increased funding into mental health concerns in recent years, Spence says that this doesn't mean all aspects of mental health are addressed equally.

He says that mental health runs across a spectrum that might range from living your best life on one end through to somebody who might have a severe or life-threatening illness that needs specialist intervention.

"The Government has chosen to focus on a part of that continuum, which concerns early intervention for people with milder conditions.

"A lot of the people in the sector I have spoken to say that has come at the cost of work that is needed to be done on either side of that. So we need more prevention and we need more at the specialist end of things where demand has increased and workforce pressures have become worse. There are still enormous gaps."

The question that hangs over all this now is what it will take to fill those gaps and ensure that people get the care they need when they need it.

Listen to the full podcast to hear the full story.

• The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am.

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