Editorial

Abstract

The mental health and wellbeing of young people is at the forefront of mental health policy in Australia, with significant recent investment in initiatives for those aged 12-25 years. This is a welcome outcome from over 15 years of sustained advocacy. Mental health was recognised as a health priority area in 1996 and, since then, increasing awareness of the burden of mental disorder in adolescence and young adulthood has sharpened the focus on this stage of the lifespan. The most recent Australian data from the National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing revealed that one in four young people will experience an affective, anxiety or substance use disorder in a 12-month period. This parallels data from the large US comorbidity study, which showed that three-quarters of mental disorders emerge before the age of 25 years and half before the age of 14.The National Action Plan for Promotion, Prevention and Early Intervention for Mental Health in 2000 emphasised the need to focus on the teenage and early adult years, and many of its directions were taken up and have significantly advanced. The Plan provided strong conceptual support to intervene early in the developmental trajectory of mental disorder, aiming to prevent the development of disorder where possible and, where this was not possible, to mitigate the impact of disorder on the individual, their family and the community. It is particularly important to reduce the impact of mental health problems on adolescents and young adults as they are in the process of accomplishing essential developmental tasks that if not achieved, interfere with their transition to adulthood and can have a lifelong negative impact. All young people need support to develop their identity and independence, belong and connect with relevant social groups including family, and to attain educational and vocational goals. Young people experiencing mental health problems need even greater support to achieve these outcomes.This special issue of Advances in Mental Health (ISSN 1837-4905), 'Promoting Youth Mental Health through Early Intervention' also released as a reader (ISBN 978-1-921729-30-0), presents a range of original research, conceptual and descriptive articles that consider some recent initiatives in promoting youth mental health through early intervention. The first paper (Catania, Hetrick, Newman & Purcell, 2011) sets the groundwork by examining whether there are evidence-based models of care for prevention and early intervention for mental health problems for those aged up to 25 years. Importantly, evidence for childhood interventions is covered as well as that relevant in adolescence and early adulthood. This acknowledges that the childhood and preteen years are also vital for early intervention for mental health. Catania et al. (2011) argue that there is a pressing need to develop better models of care to ensure greater access to appropriate early intervention services, and that evidence for the value of collaborative and integrated service systems is growing.The next three papers (Collin et al., 2011; Howe, Batchelor, & Bochynska, 2011; Wilson, Rickwood, Bushnell, Caputi, & Thomas, 2011) consider different aspects of promoting effective help-seeking and service use by young people. The strong current focus on youth help-seeking is in response to the low rate of professional service use evident at this stage of life - a clear mismatch with the high level of need. Effective youth participation is essential to developing services that young people are prepared to use, and the paper entitled 'Finding our way' (Howe et al., 2011) describes how youth participation was incorporated within the development and promotion of youth mental health services in the Central Coast. The next article considers two factors that have been argued to signifi- cantly impact on young people's reluctance to use professional services - need for autonomy and preference for seeking help from informal sources - and their infl uence is shown to be not quite as expected (Wilson et al. …