headspace day celebrated 10 years of innovation in youth mental health and was also triggered by alarming new research from Orygen and headspace that revealed more than 50 per cent of young people were waiting six or more months before seeking help for mental health issues. This period of waiting and worrying can have detrimental effects. From social isolation to relationship breakdowns, drug and alcohol abuse and in severe cases, incidents of self-harm or suicide.

The research also uncovered that close to 50 per cent of young people said financial cost was a barrier in preventing them from getting treatment. Nearly half said they believed they could not be helped and more than  50 per cent they were afraid of what others would think.

Every year, a quarter of all young people in this country will experience mental health issues and we want them all to know headspace is here to help. With 95 centres across Australia, integrated with a phone and online chat service eheadspace, over the past decade headspace has enabled over 270,000 young people to access mental health care.

We will soon expand to 110 headspace centres thanks to the government’s election commitment and a ringing endorsement of headspace as its model for youth mental health care for the future.

headspace has made outstanding progress over the past 10 years but we still have a way to go. Access is crucial and help seeking is the first step that every young person must make and we need to continue to provide effective and easy pathways to make sure this can happen for everyone.

If you would like to support headspace visit headspaceday.org.au to see how you and your local community can get involved or give a donation to support young people in need. And finally thanks to everyone who took part in the first headspace day, we look forward to you all joining us again next year.

I WAS intrigued to read a recent media report about Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie calling for the rollout of the cashless welfare card, to be rolled out first in Tasmania, including disability recipients because she considered many receive payments because of drug or alcohol issues. In a debate on the merits of the card with Lara Giddings on a Hobart radio station on March 24, 2015, Senator Lambie said, impart, the following:

“This is for families that are identified.  This is how I understand it. It is not for everybody.  Now I have not seen it in black and white.  This is for families that have been identified on welfare that are struggling in these areas, whether it's gambling, with drugs, they're not looking after their kids.  It is not for everyone.  Ok, this how I understand it.  I will be very disappointed if he is going to stigmatise everybody for a small proportion of people doing the wrong thing."

Is that not exactly what Senator Lambie will be doing, stigmatising everybody on disability support for a small proportion of people doing the wrong thing?

THERE are many reports of awful conditions for asylum seekers detained on Nauru bringing some who visited Nauru to tears and international condemnation, but the government ignores them all and constantly portrays conditions there as good.   

I believe it will leave a legacy of shame and disgrace for the present government in future years.