Beyond Awareness: Building Smarter, Safer Mental Health Support for Young Australians

Shane Warren
Jul 31
2 min read

PUBLIC RESPONSE

For Immediate Release

31 July 2025

Beyond Awareness: Building Smarter, Safer Mental Health Support for Young Australians

Over the past 25 years, mental health awareness has transformed from silence to visibility. Campaigns, school programs, and social media have played an important role in breaking stigma and encouraging help-seeking. Yet as Professor Patrick McGorry highlights, blanket awareness programs in schools may be creating unintended harms including increased distress, misdiagnosis, and misplaced confidence in “awareness” as a substitute for real care.

International trials such as the AWARE and MYRIAD studies provide sobering evidence: universal school-based mental health literacy and mindfulness programs often show little long-term benefit and, for some students, can worsen outcomes. While well intentioned, they risk pathologising normal emotional experiences, fuelling self-diagnosis, and diverting attention from those with the most urgent need for intervention.

At the same time, the biggest issue remains unchanged: young people with genuine, severe, or emerging mental illness still cannot access timely, expert care. The danger is that public investment in broad “awareness” creates an illusion of progress, while structural reforms - beds, workforce, and community-based services - remain underfunded.

What VMHPAA Believes

The Vocational Mental Health Practitioners Association of Australia (VMHPAA) supports targeted, evidence-informed approaches to youth wellbeing that recognise the diversity of student needs and avoid one-size-fits-all solutions. Our members - school counsellors, youth workers, lived experience mentors, and vocationally trained counsellors - see every day that effective support is about connection, trust, and triage, not mass messaging alone.

A Smarter Way Forward

We call for:

Evidence-based programs that focus on at-risk students rather than universal “awareness” campaigns.
Investment in workforce diversity, including vocationally trained practitioners embedded in schools and communities.
Clearer pathways to care so that awareness leads somewhere tangible, whether that’s early intervention, counselling, or specialist services.
Culturally responsive approaches that reflect the lived realities of young Australians, including First Nations and multicultural communities.
Responsible use of social media and public education, ensuring young people receive accurate, supportive information rather than unregulated content that fuels confusion.

As our Chair, Shane Warren, notes:

“Awareness is only the beginning. What matters is what comes after - the ability for a young person to find safe, skilled, and timely care. Without that, awareness becomes frustration.” Shane Warren

And as Secretary Susan Sandy reminds us:

“Vocational practitioners have long been the bridge between distress and recovery in schools and communities. The future lies in strengthening that bridge, not in flooding classrooms with generic programs.” Susan Sandy

Call to Action

Australia must move beyond awareness campaigns as a proxy for reform. The real task is building a system of care that is responsive, inclusive, and grounded in evidence. That means prioritising investment in targeted supports, recognising the contribution of vocationally trained practitioners, and ensuring awareness translates into action.