A new report released today by Mission Australia reveals that young people who said COVID-19 was their biggest issue in 2020 were most concerned about the impact of the pandemic on their education, experience of isolation and mental health. The young people hardest hit by these issues were those living in Victoria, and 17-year-olds were most likely to say their education was severely impacted by COVID-19.

The Young Voices of the Pandemic: Youth Survey COVID Report 2020 brings to life reflections on the experience of living through the pandemic between April and August 2020 through voices and perspectives from young people in Australia aged between 15 and 19.

Young Victorians were more likely to report COVID-19 was the biggest issue they had been facing than their peers in other States and Territories. Additionally, young people in Victoria were more likely to be concerned about COVID-19 affecting their education, isolation and mental health than young people residing in other States and Territories.

Nationally, four in 10 (41.1%) respondents who said COVID-19 affected their education were 17 years old, indicating those in their senior years of school were severely impacted by the pandemic.

More than one third (34.4%) of respondents who reported COVID-19 and education was their top personal concern were living in Victoria.

Almost half (43.9%) of the young people who revealed personal concerns in relation to the impact of COVID-19 on being and feeling isolated were living in Victoria. Nationally, more than two thirds of those reporting mental health concerns due to COVID-19 were young females (68.9% of females compared with 23.9% of males).

Young people affected by COVID-19 described disruptions to their everyday lives as making them feel worried and stressed and without access to their usual supports.

Mission Australia’s CEO, James Toomey said: “These findings make clear the breadth and depth of the toll that COVID-19 has had on young people living in Australia. Major disruptions to education, increased isolation from peers, family and community, and mental health concerns understandably featured heavily within young people’s responses.

Full Report: Young Voices of the Pandemic: Youth Survey COVID Report 2020

Report Infographic: Young Voices of the Pandemic: Youth Survey COVID Report infographic

By Phillip Mendes, Associate Professor, Department of Social Work, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences

Popular depictions of drug use suggest that people who inject them come from all walks of life. In the 1980s, entertainer Debbie Byrne was often presented as the stereotypical middle-class heroin user, and the tabloid media still highlights stories of drug use at privileged private schools. Yet the reality is rather different.

There’s considerable historical evidence to suggest that most people who use heroin come from poor or socially disadvantaged backgrounds. There’s also evidence to suggest that many people who use drugs who come from middle-class or affluent backgrounds have experienced significant personal trauma involving violence, abuse, and/or grief.

The noted psychologist Isidor Chein found that Americans who used drugs were generally concentrated in areas characterised by low socioeconomic status, poor education, and high levels of family breakdown.

And David Courtwright, in his book Forces of Habit, cites research from Pakistan and India confirming that substance use is most prevalent among street children, dropouts, petty criminals, sex workers, the jobless, and other socially marginal groups.

Professor Joanne Neale from the National Addictions Centre, King’s College, London, found that people using drugs in Scotland had backgrounds characterised by family disruption, parents or siblings with substance use problems, childhood abuse, poor mental health, and teenage homelessness.

Similarly, the Swedish social work academic Ted Goldberg found that people from the “lowest social stratum” were markedly over-represented among those experiencing drug dependence.

Goldberg identified a number of factors that were likely to contribute to increased heroin use, including:

• high unemployment
• limited access to education
• segregated housing
• racism towards newcomers
• traumatic refugee experiences.

Other important psychosocial factors included parents who were alcoholics, experience of physical, sexual or emotional abuse, and poor family relations.

In Australia, research shares many of these assumptions.

The 1996 Victorian Premier’s Drug Advisory Council report identified drug use with socioeconomic disadvantage and emotional disorder. Marginalised young people lacking education or family support were considered to be particularly vulnerable.

The 2000 Victorian Drug Policy Expert Committee suggested that increased drug use and overdoses could be attributed to a number of factors, including:

• school withdrawal
• unemployment
• social isolation and economic inequality.

A Hanover Welfare Services report (1996) attributed drug use to “fractured family relationships, abuse, homelessness, and lives of poverty”.

And a report on street sex workers noted close connections between childhood abuse, homelessness, prostitution and substance use (Rowe 2003).

The report by Hanover summed it up succinctly:

“Sure, there are some well-heeled heroin addicts, a smattering of upwardly mobile and celebrity users. But you don’t see many of them amongst the haunted faces cruising streets in Footscray, St Kilda, Springvale, Dandenong and the CBD. We know by now that when you’re addicted to heroin, your life generally becomes a cheap theatre of constant hustling and scheming … It is a life of anguish and constant financial hardship … Jobless poverty and heroin are soulmates.”

More recently, a survey of people who use the Richmond Medically Supervised Injecting Room shows that they are more likely to:

• be unemployed
• reside in unstable accommodation or be homeless
• Identify as Aboriginal
• have been in prison in the past 12 months.

Read more: Supervised injecting facilities work, but is Melbourne ready for a second one?

Similarly, a surveyed group of regular users of Sydney’s King’s Cross injecting facility reported:

• 96% had a history of trauma
• 82% had a mental health diagnosis
• 54% had attempted suicide, and one third had a history of self-harm.

Thus, heroin use can potentially be seen by users as a solution to deep-seated social, economic, and emotional problems. Just as some of the mentally ill use heroin to self-medicate, so do many people appear to use heroin to relieve their emotional pain.

This connection is stated explicitly by Peter Norden, the director of Jesuit Social Services (JSS).

According to Norden, many of the young people involved in JSS programs have experienced considerable personal trauma, including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse at young ages.

Norden argues significantly that young people use drugs “in response to pain, suffering and isolation, not because they deliberately choose to behave in a self-destructive manner”.

The demonstrated relationship between problematic substance use and emotional pain suggests that any policy solution will need to involve positive social and emotional support, and opportunities that specifically address existing feelings of hopelessness and frustration.

Problematic substance use is particularly apparent in two disadvantaged population groups that I have researched.

One is young people transitioning from out-of-home care.

A number of studies have reported that young people in, and leaving, care are more likely to be involved in problematic substance use.

This doesn’t mean that most care-leavers use substances. But just as a disproportionate number of care-leavers are represented in the long-term homeless population, its likely that care-leavers form a high proportion of the long-term substance use cohort.

Read more: Advancing smoother transitions for those leaving residential out-of-home care

Our recent Sidney Myer-funded national study of Indigenous care-leavers found that some of that cohort struggle with alcohol and other drug use. Problematic substance use makes them more vulnerable to family violence, the removal of their children, homelessness, and involvement in the justice system.

Care-leavers are disproportionately exposed to key risk factors for substance use, including:

• experiences of abuse and neglect both prior to, and during, care
• poor housing and homelessness
• pre-existing mental health problems
• prenatal exposure to drugs.

Other contributing factors include exposure to parental substance use, early school exclusion and/or truanting, association with substance using peers, absconding from parental home or care placements, and earlier initiation of substance use.

It appears that many care-leavers use substances to self-medicate for the internal emotional pain brought about as a consequence of traumatic experiences such as the suicide of family members, and experiences of sexual assault, rape, physical assault, and bullying.

Substance use also seems to correlate with the absence of consistent caring relationships with carers and other adults while in care, punitive and inappropriate responses by workers to substance use, and premature and unplanned departures from care that compound substance use problems by causing unstable and transient living situations.

A second group at risk are those Australians of working age on unemployment payments – such as the JobSeeker allowance (particularly the long-term unemployed) – who are currently targeted by forms of conditional welfare.

They’re framed by policymakers as the undeserving poor who are assumed to have made bad individual choices (completely unrelated to any experiences of unfair social and economic structures) to engage in problematic substance use.

Firstly, there’s the longstanding targeting since 2007 of people allegedly involved in problematic substance use by the introduction of various compulsory income management (IM) measures, including most recently cashless debit cards affecting more than 40,000 people to date. A key assumption behind the IM program is that it will reduce forms of individual and community harm associated with alcohol and other (AOD) use, such as child abuse, crime, family violence, unemployment, and homelessness.

Yet our recent ARC-funded study in four income management (IM) sites reported that:

• many participants did not have pre-existing substance use disorders
• IM seems to have had limited impact on substance use in the targeted sites
• where some positive change has occurred, it was difficult to segregate the impact of IM from other discrete programs and policies introduced at the same time.

In particular, IM doesn’t address the complex underlying social, psychological and medical causes of AOD use, such as financial disadvantage, a history of childhood trauma, and poor mental health. Nor does it appreciate the many complex factors involved in pathways to addiction management or abstention.

Secondly, there’s the proposed introduction (to date not passed by the Upper House of the Commonwealth Parliament) of a two-year drug-testing trial aimed at 5000 new recipients of the JobSeeker allowance and youth allowance across three locations in NSW (Canterbury-Bankstown), Queensland (Logan), and Western Australia (Mandurah).

The trial aims to address substance use issues that act as barriers to employment.

However, as noted by a submission from the Monash Addiction Research Centre to an inquiry into the proposed trial, there’s no evidence that punitive measures will reduce drug use, or assist social security recipients to access employment or participate in education and training.

A structural solution to problematic substance use

Many writers offer a generic structural solution to illicit drug use based on the redistribution of wealth and income. For example, the respected British journal New Statesman argued that “inequality and poverty breed drug dependence”, and called for “a war on poverty, not on drugs”.

Similarly, Goldberg recommends a range of macro measures to reduce long-term demand for drugs focused on limiting social exclusion, and devising supports to compensate for deficits in schools, families, and the labour market. He argues that:

“… to the extent we can provide as many citizens as possible with the hope of a reasonable future, we will reduce the number of problematic consumers of narcotics.”

Making it personal … and structural

Generic formulas, however, do not specifically address the personal needs of people involved in substance use. It’s true that structural reforms may help prevent a new generation of young people being drawn into financial hardship, homelessness, social isolation, and potentially into drug dependence, but it’s unlikely that structural measures alone will help rehabilitate those whose personal traumas are driving their drug use.

The latter group requires both specific structural and personal assistance.

Structural assistance would involve improved access to holistic primary healthcare, housing and employment, education and training services.

Personal support would involve extending support well beyond the rehabilitation or withdrawal stage to offer ongoing counselling that addresses underlying emotional or psychological affliction.

Acknowledgements: An earlier version of this content was presented at a Monash Addiction Research Centre webinar on 16 June. Many thanks to Associate Professor Suzanne Nielsen, Deputy Director of the Monash Addiction Research Centre, for her input.

This article was first published on Monash Lens. Read the original article

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A new study about Australia’s Youth released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) last week focuses on the increased challenges faced by young Australians as a result of the COVID pandemic.

The report revealed the heightened impacts of the COVID restrictions on Australian youth aged between 15-24 years old, compared to older age groups, particularly highlighting psychological distress, job loss and education disruption as a result.

In the stages of adolescence and young adulthood, young people are in critical transitional phases of life. After finishing school, young people begin to pursue further educational and training programs, or enter the workforce. It is at this time in young people’s lives that they are building the foundations for their future life, health and well-being. However, for many young Australians these pathways have been disrupted as a result of the pandemic.

Results from the study found that “the proportion of young people aged between 15-24 not in education, employment or training has risen from 8.7% in May 2019, to 12% in May 2020” following the introduction of COVID restrictions.

The study revealed that injury rates of young people, “remains the leading cause of death among young people, accounting for 73% of deaths in 2017-19. Just over half of injury deaths (54%) were intentional, with the remainder classified as unintentional or undetermined intent.”

“These results are consistent with the high demand and increased complexity of young people presenting at Triple Care Farm. Over 90% of young people seeking help from drug and alcohol addiction have underlying mental health issues and the majority have had suicidal ideation,” said Helen Connealy, General Manager, Sir David Martin Foundation.

“It is positive news that the report shows levels of risky drinking, daily smoking and recent illicit drug use have fallen dramatically over the last two decades,” said Ms Connealy.

“However we know that vulnerable young people with complex mental health, continue to self-medicate to ease their pain. Triple Care Farm is one of the few youth specific treatment centres to offer holistic care to help them get well and stay well.”

Read more:

If you want to read the AIHW full report about Australia’s Youth,  you can access it here.

To learn more about Triple Care Farm, you can read our Annual Report for 2019-2020.

Thank you to all who joined us at last Thursday’s crowdfunding event, powered by The Funding Network Australia

What an incredible evening! We laughed, we cried… it was such a positive and feel good event, We are delighted to share that we well and truly exceeded our target and raised $165,300 for young people in crisis. All funds raised will support Mission Australia’s Triple Care Farm – whose lifesaving programs were showcased on the night.

Watch the full event

Make a pledge

Triple Care Farm graduate Lily* penned this moving poem about her recovery journey through addiction.

Cracks of light dance on the walls
The dots of chaos blurry;
Muddling the soul’s vision.

Hands sliced open,
Slipping on shards of glass
Invisible against the wooden boards
That bruised her knees.

Shattered and scratching,
She glances ahead
Notes the walls and door decorated with her pleads
In the form of bloody marks.Shattered and scrambling
She glances beside herself,
To the walls closing in;
arms stretched to stop them;
cracked bones like fire dancing in her blood;
Bruises forming disguised as love.

Shattered and screaming
Crying for protection
She glanced down to her arms,
notes the toxins seeping into her veins.

Hushed and whispering, her whimpering is heard
Guiding fragments of her spirit
Through chaotic light shows;
Escaping through the cracks
Allowing themselves to engulf the room with light.

The dots more distinct now;
The edges forever fighting the darkness waiting for a slip,
For a break,
for a way in
Walls slowly crumbling;
Foundation remolding

Colours darting against the cracks flooded through the walls
Creating a cosmos of chaos
A blinding raw chaos.

Scratching, scrambling, screaming
Turns to
Breathing, walking;
Reaching the exit
finally recalling the secret whereabouts of the spare key.

Opening;
Rays fall upon faded scars
Burnt from shooting stars,
The vicious lights darting around her cold room
The rays
Like warm hands guiding her to a personal garden of forgiveness
The real garden of Eden.

Rose tinted rays
Creating rose tinted memories
Engraved signature on her soul in a chaotic cosmos
Shattered and scrambling;
Turns to
Kindness and gratitude
She quickens her pace
Embracing the warm lights.

Lily’s story…

You can read more of Lily’s inspiration story of her time at Triple Care Farm and her journey to recovery as part of Sir David Martin Foundation’s 2021 Tax Appeal.

*Lily’s name and image have been changed to protect her privacy.

We thank her for allowing us to share her words and story.

Reach out for help

If you need urgent help right now, please call 000, or contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800

For more information and support regarding youth addiction contact:

Are you ready to join the crowd and experience a brand new way of giving? Join Sir David Martin Foundation and MC James Valentine at our very special virtual crowdfunding event on Thursday 17 June, LIVE from the Australian Stock Exchange (online from 6.15pm for 6.30pm start).

This hybrid event (powered by The Funding Network Australia) will harness collective goodwill to help vulnerable young Australians break the cycle of addiction and connect with life-changing education & employment pathways.

MC’ed by brilliant ABC Broadcaster James Valentine, this fun & interactive event will see three guest speakers deliver 6 minute ‘shark tank’-style presentations showcasing lifesaving programs from Mission Australia’s Triple Care Farm. This is followed by an exciting live-pledging session, where you will experience the adrenaline of collective giving. There’s no cost to attend and no obligation to donate.