Suicide remains the biggest killer of Australians aged between 15 to 25-years-of-age. Young people and marginalised communities are disproportionately represented in the figures.
With half of mental health disorders first emerging by the age of 14, and 75 per cent by the age of 24, clinical lead for Youth Insearch Leanne Hall says there are several contributing factors to why young people can feel this way.
"Part of the reason why these things emerge in those early, developmentally, there's a lot of brain development that's still going on. There's this thing called neural pruning. We know the brain sort of starts to prune and go through lots of changes. And also young people at that age are going through lots of change in their circumstances as well. They're moving schools, they're forming peer relationships, some of them you know, more romantic relationships and conflicts with family often comes in as well when they're going through those teenage years. So, there's a lot going on."
Overwhelmingly, members of the LGBTIQA+ community have the highest rate of suicide. Rural populations are two times more likely to die by suicide, and almost one in four young people dying by suicide in Australia are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations.
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