Federal funding for child mental health and wellbeing survey

The Federal Government has awarded $8.1 million for the third National Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing which University of Adelaide experts will play a key role in.

The Young Minds: Our Future survey will be led by Curtin University’s Professor David Lawrence, with the University of Adelaide's Emeritus Professor Michael Sawyer a key contributor.

This survey will build on insights from previous studies, which also involved Emeritus Professor Sawyer, and will require face-to-face interviews with 6,500 primary carers of children aged four to 17; children aged 11 to 17 will also be invited to complete a questionnaire.

The last survey revealed one in seven Australians aged four to 17 had a mental disorder, with only 56 per cent having received help in the year prior to the survey.

Emeritus Professor Sawyer said objectives of the survey were to update the prevalence rates of mental disorders amongst children and adolescents as well as obtaining information about the extent to which children and adolescents currently receive help for mental disorders.

It will also seek to assess how mental health symptoms and disorders affect quality of life, establish rates of suicidality and self-harm and examine changes in help-seeking behaviours and service use since the last survey.

Roy Morgan will collect the data for the study between 2025 and 2026, and the findings are expected to be delivered in 2027.