00:00We have a crisis in youth mental health in Australia, as in many other developed countries,
00:06of rapidly increasing rates of mental ill health, self-harm and sadly suicidal behaviour.
00:12One of the things that we know we can do most about is reducing bullying.
00:16So we've had good evidence for 20 years of its ill effects at a population level, that
00:20we've been relatively slow to action, and during that period of course it's been amplified
00:25by new social media, by new platforms, and the rates of self-harm and suicidal behaviour,
00:29particularly in young women, have increased dramatically in that time.
00:32So it's absolutely worth attention at the National Cabinet level.
00:36So is it being done via social media in the main, Ian, rather than at school itself?
00:43No bullying is not new, and most of us would know that's not new, but what's happened now
00:46is extending outside of the school period and being amplified.
00:50So social media is an accelerant on a really toxic fire that runs anyway.
00:54Of course what it does, it connects schools as well, so it's not just within a particular
00:58school, but schools within regions and young people's communities, so it's the extension
01:02beyond the schoolyard and the 24-7 nature of it.
01:05So certainly social media has amplified what was already a very toxic behaviour.
01:10Okay, so there have been many, many attempts to tackle bullying at schools.
01:15These are the latest, it's still happening.
01:17What needs to be done?
01:19What's going to make the difference?
01:20Well we've largely left this in the hands of individual schools and individual school
01:25systems, so states, private schools, independent schools, religious schools, respond differentially
01:30and often left in the hands of school principals and school communities.
01:34What we actually require are much more than just guidelines or advice.
01:38We need actually national standards for two things, promoting pro-social behaviour and
01:43making it very clear that bullying is unacceptable, and then secondly national standards for investigating
01:48specific incidents so they're not glossed over, they're not passed over, and as a consequence
01:53of that also collecting national statistics of how effective we are being.
01:57So we need to be much more serious.
01:59So there's a tendency to say look, we've all been bullied, it's happened to everyone in
02:02the past, what's all the drama about, but in truth it is one of the most toxic elements
02:06contributing to the rise in mental ill health amongst our young people.
02:11What can parents do, Ian?
02:14Parents need to be involved, so parents need to be involved and not be afraid of media
02:18and not be afraid of taking this up with schools, so parents need to get involved when they
02:22see early signs.
02:23So of course the thing is to try and pick this up early before behaviour escalates in
02:27the person who's affected or amongst the social group responsible.
02:31So parents being prepared to have these discussions about bullying, about mental ill health, about
02:36self-harm in young people, particularly in the younger age groups, 11 to 15, where people
02:40have been reluctant to discuss what's really going on, and then discuss that very openly
02:45with school communities in a productive way, in a collaborative way, to try and make it
02:49really clear we want to see pro-social behaviour and we want to stamp out this kind of very
02:53anti-social and very harmful behaviour.
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