Page 1928 - Week 07 - Thursday, 13 August 2020
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people across the world are too, and have been going through the same thing as you are.
It is critical in our society to start openly discussing our feelings, no matter how small, damaged or painful they are. During our inquiry it was evident that a lot of times our youth just needed someone to talk to or someone to trust. We need to start talking. This is a first step to taking care of our mental wellbeing. Through my own experience I know that in repressing my emotions my mental health ended up getting worse. I was suicidal on several occasions. Once I started embracing my personal internal struggle, I began to heal, but it took many years in my maturity to figure that out.
Now, as a politician in this place, I do not want to see kids feeling ashamed to talk about their internal struggle. I know that things that are happening outside do not exactly represent things happening inside. We need to send out a clear and loud message that whatever is going on inside is okay and is normal. It is normal to feel different emotions. We even have Facebook emojis to represent our normal feelings. Last time I counted there were 82 emojis to represent different feelings, and millions of people are using them across the world.
I want our young people not to be ashamed when they are sad. I want our young people not to be ashamed when they are depressed. You are just going through normal feelings, and it is normal to talk about it. We need to normalise our feelings when we are upset, frustrated, sad or depressed. We need to start the conversation. It will be hard because we are not used to it, but the more we do it the easier it will be.
MS LEE (Kurrajong) (10.55): Whilst the chair and deputy chair have already spoken at length, I want to highlight some of the issues that I think have not yet been covered. One of the things I was concerned about was that we did not get much evidence about some of the specific concerns faced by young people who are from a culturally and linguistically diverse background when it comes to dealing with mental health issues. Whilst that was unfortunate for the inquiry and for the report itself, it actually highlights the stigma that is attached and is perhaps a reason for us to note that it is still important—that unspoken words speak louder when they are coming from that particular kind of background.
That is why the committee made, in particular, recommendation 26, which “recommends the ACT Government assess the current mental health workforce and ensure it reflects the diversity of Canberra’s population” and recommendation 60, which calls on the ACT government to ensure that services are co-designed by young people, including those from a CALD background.
We also heard very clearly from the evidence about the huge gaps in service delivery, and evidence from Canberra’s young people who were required to go beyond Canberra to places like Bowral and Shellharbour just to get access to services that most people, I think, would have assumed we had here. That is why recommendation 17 is so important. It states:
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