Children's Mental Health

The Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne has prepared a Policy Brief on Children's Mental Health. Australia has seen significantly increased awareness of mental illness and a major increase in funding available to try to address the issue. However, the focus for attention and funding is primarily on 12-25 year olds and disadvantaged groups – only a tiny fraction of the available mental health funding in Australia is devoted to 0-12 year olds. The next step is to focus on mental illness prevention and mental health promotion from very early childhood; many of the mental health problems encountered in adolescence and adulthood have their origins in early childhood. The definition of mental health problems in early childhood is complex, but for the purposes of this Policy Brief it includes a range of social, emotional and behavioural concerns.