Estimated read time: less than 5 minutes

Dear  

Notes from the Chair

Welcome to the Spring-Summer edition of the SYMH Newsletter. Remember you can get early access to these Newsletters if you join the Youth Psychiatry Open Forum WhatsApp group (see Jarrad Paul’s article).

Youth Mental Health specifically continues to make the news as does mental health in general, and just today (19/11) there is a prominent article about the workforce crisis in NSW, in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Trainees and consultants alike, please take care of yourselves and your loved ones, as well as those young people you care for in your working day.

Enjoy this bumper edition of the Newsletter – our biggest yet!

Daniel Pellen
Chair, Bi-national Section of Youth Mental Health Committee

Certificate of Advanced Training

Slow progress continues! Since the beginning of the year a group of dedicated Youth psychiatrists have been meeting with College staff fortnightly to complete all the detail and steer the application through the College Committee system.

We have recently submitted and received further feedback from the Education Committee (EC) and will be re-submitting to the EC for their February 7, 2025, meeting. We hope that soon after this meeting we will be able to submit to the Board.

Professional Certificate in Youth Psychiatry

The Bi-national Section of Youth Mental Health Committee is pleased to advise that registration for the 2025 Professional Certificate in Youth Psychiatry has commenced, with the course scheduled to run from 14 April until 23 November 2025.

This course will be part of the Formal Education Course (FEC) of the Certificate of Advanced Training in Youth Psychiatry which we hope will commence in mid-2025. Students who complete the course in 2025 will be eligible for advanced standing for the FEC.

The Professional Certificate is a fully online course designed specifically for psychiatry trainees who wish to specialise in Youth Psychiatry. It comprises 24 weeks of lectures. It is the equivalent of two university graduate-level subjects (25 credit points), which can contribute to further qualifications from the University of Melbourne if students wish to pursue this. It is open to all psychiatry trainees (both accredited and unaccredited) and RANZCP Fellows.

For more information about the Professional Certificate please visit Professional Certificate in Youth Psychiatry - Orygen, Revolution in Mind

Registration closes 16 March 2025.

QLD Jurisdictional - Dr David Hartman

We are very excited to have established the SYMH Queensland Subcommittee. Following an enthusiastic response to our invitations of interest, the membership has been finalised and we will be planning our first meeting for early 2025. My motivation for taking this forward has been to contribute to a Queensland professional network and community of clinical practice, which will support education, training and professional development in Queensland. As the chair of the subcommittee, I am looking forward to meeting the members and hearing about their views about taking Youth Mental Health forward. I am also hoping that we can have a professional development dinner meeting some time in 2025.

VIC Jurisdictional - Dr Iain MacMillan

On behalf of the Organising Committee, I would like to express our thanks to all those of you who joined us for the Section of Youth Mental Health’s 2024 Conference in Surfers Paradise, in July. The meeting was extremely well attended, and we were delighted to have such strong representation from trainee members of the Section. We hope that the meeting was an inspiration to you, and that you will prioritise getting involved in future meetings.

We had a very engaging and interesting range of speakers, who delivered some timely updates on training, the “big picture”, peer involvement, and service developments and scientific updates in a rapidly developing subspecialty. My personal highlights were an extremely moving “Welcome to Country” and an “In Conversation” session with two Australians of the Year – Pat McGorry (2010) and Grace Tame (2021), skilfully chaired by Astha Tomar, discussing matters of importance around Youth Mental Health, and coming to a remarkable consensus!

The Conference seems to have become biennial, with the previous ones being in Manly, in 2020, and Mparntwe (Alice Springs) in 2022. The next meeting will be scheduled for 2026, provisionally in Hobart, Tasmania. We would very much appreciate any feedback as to the length of the Conference – currently 1 ½ days - is that enough or would longer (2-3 days) be better? Please send any suggestions and comments to us via Adriana Restrepo, adriana.restrepo.gomez@ranzcp.org to inform us! Please also let us know of any other places you would like us to consider holding future meetings!

Co-Opted Member Lisa Juckes(NSW)

I attended the Social Media Summit Day 1 held in Sydney on Oct 10^th, co-convened by NSW Govt & SA Govt.

There was a curated program of speakers presenting keynotes and parallel sessions although there was limited opportunity to contribute further input.  Keynote sessions included:

• Dr Jean Twenge - (Professor Psychology at San Diego State University, social psychologist and author)
• Ms Frances Haugen – Data scientist and social media accountability advocate (whistleblower former employee at Facebook)

One of the two ‘workshop’ sessions I was assigned to was made up of a panel of speakers addressing disparate views on Digital Parenting Challenges and Strategies and included:

• Dr Joanne Orlando – digital wellbeing researcher
• Mr Dani Elachi – co-founder of parent group, The Heads-Up Alliance, advocating for raising the age of social media access via a ban
• Dr Elizabeth Milovidov – founder Digital Parenting Coach.com

A second concurrent stream included:

Dr Daniela Einstein – registered clinical psychologist and adjunct fellow of School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie Uni, author of “Raising Anxiety – Why our good intentions are backfiring on children” as moderator of a panel with:

• Dr Michael Carr-Gregg (adolescent psychologist)
• Professor Sarah Maguire OAM, Director Inside Out Institute for Eating Disorders and Professor of Medicine U Syd
• Dr Murray Wright (NSW Health Chief Psychiatrist) and Dr Kerry Chant AO NSW Chief Health Officer

The summit provided a platform for presentations about the increasing concerns of negative impacts of social media exposure raised by researchers, parent groups and a large contingent of youth representatives from across NSW who also attended various plenary and parallel breakout ‘workshops’.

The focus areas were:

• Impacts on children and young people’s wellbeing (note a lack of child and adolescent or youth psychiatrists as speakers and influencers)
• Issues around online safety, cyberbullying, privacy
• Social media platforms and their role (and hitherto lack of accountability and responsibility) in dissemination of disinformation and misinformation
• Addressing online hate and extremism

A standout message was the alarmingly increasing rates of depression, anxiety, body image related concerns, loneliness, correlating with (not necessarily causal of – still a source of some debate) increased time (above about 2 hours a day) spent online on a range of social media platforms. The addictive nature and design of social media technology that young people are engaging with was raised but could have been explored in much more depth as this is still not deeply understood. The most vulnerable were reported to be 10-13 year olds but 13-16 also significantly affected, which seems to be the basis for advocates of a ban on social media access for under 16s (but there was no discussion about neurodevelopment of the adolescent and young adult brain to inform any other protective or harm reduction measures) and there was alarm at the “unprecedented prescribing of antidepressants” to children and adolescents, and record rates of school refusal.  Attention was drawn to the recent Lancet psychiatry publication reporting the mental health of global young people with Australians being ‘particularly hard hit’ with rates of young people experiencing a mental health condition having greatly increased since surveyed in 2007 (see The Lancet Psychiatry, vol 11, Issue 9 – September 2024) and yet there remains a woefully small budget provision for developing effective interventions.

There was unfortunately not much representation by Child and Adolescent and Youth (or any) psychiatrists in the program, so plenty of scope for our section to raise its voice and contribute our expertise in future meetings.

The keynote addresses and major panel discussions from the Summit Day in Sydney (10^th October) can be accessed on the NSW government website nsw.gov.au/nsw-government/social-media-summit for those interested in hearing more.

Trainee Representative- Dr Jarrad Paul- Report

As many of you will now know, in March this year we formed the Youth Psychiatry Open Forum. This WhatsApp community has successfully grown to over 120 members and serves the very important function of connecting psychiatrists and registrars with a passion for youth mental health. The platform has been used to debate hot topics in youth psychiatry, provide updates and links to surveys, share employment opportunities, and promote original research and literature. There have been occasions where we have linked clients with appropriate specialist care, improving the patient experience and thus the capacity of our field of interest. We welcome any feedback on the Open Forum and endeavour to optimise its functionality moving forward.

Please click here or scan the QR code below to join, and feel free to share with others. We kindly ask that new members introduce themselves so that we can continue to feel safe to contribute to our online community.

NZ Jurisdictional Member - Dr Alastair Cameron

An Introduction to NZEIPS:

(With thanks to Natasha Davis and Eleanor Baggott from NZEIPS )

The New Zealand Early Intervention in Psychosis Society (NZEIPS) is a national charity organisation with a diverse membership including clinicians, people with lived experience, whānau members and researchers interested in supporting and developing services for young people recovering from psychosis. Our interest focuses on the wellbeing of young people who have experienced symptoms of psychosis, and the best support available for them and their families.

An elected National Executive committee includes clinicians from Early Intervention services across the country, representing a range of different professional disciplines, and includes whānau and lived experience representation. The aim of the committee is to oversee the development of New Zealand-specific resources and initiatives and seeks to influence the development of services in line with international best practice whilst advocating for the needs of Aotearoa services specifically.

Our next NZEIPS EIP Training Forum will be held in Ōtautahi Christchurch in October 2025. The theme for this Forum is around Equity and Diversity. We believe that this is especially important in our work with young people experiencing psychosis. Particular ways we will focus on this theme will include speakers and workshops around:

• Working with Māori and addressing health inequities
• Physical health and ‘equally well’ approaches
• Working with families
• Responding to diverse needs e.g. neurodivergence, cognitive difficulties
• Trauma informed care 

We would welcome anyone from the wider early intervention whanau in Australia to join us for this.

More information about NZEIPS can be found on our website Home (nzeips.co.nz)

And here is a link to some stories about/from some tangata whiaora sharing their experiences, it is uniquely of Aotearoa but their stories will resonate and be familiar to you:

Taurewarewa, a short documentary about bipolar and psychosis. Featuring three wāhine toa telling their story of bipolar, the kōrero is open, honest, and informative, set against a calming backdrop of Aotearoa's oceans.

Next Edition 

If there is anything you would like to see included in future newsletters please contact membership@ranzcp.org