New Unicef report ranks Aotearoa New Zealand low for child and youth mental health and wellbeing

Aotearoa New Zealand is included in a new report from Unicef that provides critical insight into child wellbeing in the world’s wealthier countries between 2018-2022. Dr Ella Cullen reflects on our country’s poor ranking in Report Card 19: Fragile Gains – Child Wellbeing at Risk in an Unpredictable World. 

Recent findings from the new UNICEF report show worsening youth mental health in Aotearoa New Zealand. This is not new information but seeing how we measure up internationally clearly tells us that we are simply not doing enough. We are failing to address well-established high rates of suicide and mental distress among our young people as a nation.

There is overwhelming evidence to show that psychological distress and mental wellbeing for young people is declining over time. New Zealand’s high suicide rates was one of the catalysts for the Government Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction (the He Ara Oranga Inquiry) in 2019 alongside widespread concern within the mental health sector and the broader community about services. Rates of suicide for young Māori people or rangatahi Māori have been noted as a pressing health and social issue for Aotearoa New Zealand.

Youth mental health is a complex interplay between individual, peer, family, system and macro factors. These include development in early environments, family dynamics, access to basic needs such as warm housing, adequate income, quality education, safe digital and online environments and navigating a rapidly changing world to name a few.

Our 2024 assessment of youth mental health and wellbeing paints a picture of a system that continues to marginalise young people, especially young people with lived experience of mental distress and addiction. It also showed that New Zealand's persistently high youth suicide rates reflect patterns of inequalities in the broader determinants of mental health.

There is no silver bullet to fixing this but rather sustained investment over the long term. It will take cross-party support, and cross-agency and cross-sector action at every level: at the individual, family, school, services or policy. Suicide prevention solutions need to be embedded across systems, policies and plans. We are calling for a “suicide prevention in all policies” approach, something we outline in our submission to the draft Suicide Prevention Action Plan.  

Work underway to understand the prevalence of mental health needs for children and youth is a good start to designing more effective services. Our 2024 mental health and addiction service monitoring report showed that investment in services for children and young people has not risen at the same level as other parts of the system. Youth-focused mental health services are important as young people are currently facing longer wait times for specialist mental health and addiction services. Over the last five years there has been a general decline in young people accessing mental health services, up to 10,000 fewer younger people over time. 

Coupled with addressing service access we also need to move quicker to address the broader factors that contribute to longer term mental wellbeing for our young people, to the adults they will grow into and to society at large. 

Mental health issues do not suddenly appear during youth but are a combination of risk factors that have not been addressed or prevented from taking their course. Evidence from longitudinal studies in New Zealand show that the earlier we can influence the trajectory of a young person’s life to head in the right direction the less cost there is to that young person, to their families and whānau, their communities, and to wider society.

The more prepared a young person is when they get to adolescence or their teen years to deal with stressors the more likely they are to overcome them.

That means we need to invest in what gives young people strength and resilience such as building their social capital and intergenerational connection, providing safe digital and online spaces, celebrating diversity of identities among young people and involving young people in decisions about them.

At the same time, we need to prevent risk factors from creating vulnerabilities among our rangatahi and young people. This requires a focus on providing material wellbeing for families with young people, investing in the early years for the best start in life, and providing educational resources and skills to build resilience. We need to ask what more we will do to build a secure future with more certainty that inspires optimism and hope.

The global rankings detailed in the Unicef report are a reminder of the scale of the task ahead of us. It will take all of us working together across social and political divides to make the shifts we urgently need. With concerted effort it will be possible to turn things around.