Child Mental Health

We have no real answers for school refusal. No guideline, no manual, no agreed pathway, not for GPs and, from recent experience, not even for our schools. So when a GP colleague stopped me recently and asked what we are meant to do about families dealing with school refusal, all I could honestly offer was that we are working this out as we go. Back in 2015, nearly four in five Australian students attended school at least 90 per cent of the time. By 2024 that had fallen to jus

Mental health is still the most common reason someone comes to see me as a GP. Sadness, anxiety, burnout, grief. Raw emotions, and a feeling of being lost. Increasingly, the person sitting in front of me is a child or a teenager, and their family has run out of places to turn. Not long ago a mum sat in front of me and cried, not knowing what she was meant to do next for her child. Her 13-year-old daughter had been to our local children's hospital emergency department four tim