In this episode
Derry Simpson.
CEO of Youth Focus, Derry Simpson joined us to explain how they support WA's young people, with more than 40% of those aged 12 to 25 being diagnosed with mental health illnesses but only half those receiving help. Find out how you can help by supporting the annual Ride for Youth.
About Derry Simpson
Derry Simpson is an experienced director and senior leader, and is the Chief Executive Officer at Youth Focus. Youth Focus helps support young people who experience mental health challenges to thrive in their community. Youth Focus delivers services and programs for people aged 12 to 25 that are tailored specifically for young people.
Derry's career includes being the Director of Strategy at Telethon Kids Insitute and Managing Director at 303MullenLowe. She is an exceptional facilitator, coach and leader, holding several Board and strategic advisory positions, a mentor to many young women in WA and a 2018 Telstra WA Business Woman of the Year finalist.
Derry is a champion for youth mental health, and is dedicated to improving wellbeing outcomes for young people across the State.
Transcript
MAK
A very warm welcome. I'm Marie-Anne Keeffe, but please call me MAK.
Be aware the following conversation includes discussion of mental health, suicide, and depression.
It's a very confronting fact, but in Australia, one of the luckiest countries in the world, we have a serious problem when it comes to our young people.
It appears that many of them simply don't want to live. There's no way to sugar-coat this alarming fact that suicide is the leading cause of death for our 15 to 24 year olds.
It's chilling for parents to even consider that their child might want to end their life.
My guest today is on a mission to change this frightening reality and bring hope back into the world of our wonderful kids.
Derry Simpson is the CEO of Youth Focus, a not-for-profit that helps put young people in control of their mental health.
Welcome to you, Derry.
Derry Simpson
Thanks for having me.
MAK
Look it's our pleasure, and you know, you're a mum. I guess I'm coming to this from the perspective of another mother as well.
You would understand, like I do, just how scary it is to hear that this next generation of kids who probably have more to live for than any generation ever, they're our babies and they're struggling.
Derry Simpson
Absolutely and it is so different to our generation that it's actually hard for us and where we are as parents and even as workers in this space to comprehend the why.
Like you look at, you've got almost one in two of our young people in WA with some form of diagnosed mental health challenge and that's doubled since 2007.
So these numbers are staggering and I think one of the first conversations, people always just ask me ‘why is this happening’, you know, ‘why this generation?’.
MAK
So let's just go back and look at those figures. Forty per cent of young people have a diagnosed mental health issue, between 40 and 50%, that's what you're saying.
Derry Simpson
And only half of them are receiving help.
MAK
Right, so that's overwhelming to hear in itself. And the question of why, where do you begin?
Derry Simpson
And there's no simple answer.
MAK
Right.
Derry Simpson
But I think these are, as you say, they've got so much to live for and look forward to as a generation.
And they are incredible, our young people are strong and resilient and determined. And they're facing challenges that for us as a generation, we never had.
We look at things like social media as an easy one, right? But we've got the second highest cyberbullying rate in the world in Australia and a large percentage of it when you see the numbers happens after 10 o'clock at night. So it's these young kids with their phones in their bedrooms on their own where there is no protection, there's no mum and dad to shut it off and have a chat at the dinner table. We didn't have that in our generation, we didn't know the word pandemic, we didn't watch climate change floods and fires there's so much much more for these young people to think about in thinking about their lives right now and their futures.
We had it pretty easy in some ways in comparison.
So it's really hard for us as a generation to dictate or judge or make decisions for them. We have to kind of do it with them.
MAK
I think this is so true that we were blissfully ignorant.
When I look at myself at the same age as my son, who is now 19, I really had no idea what was happening in the world around me I really had no care about much else other than, you know what was happening at uni or what I was going to be doing on the weekend. The consciousness of this generation of young adults is on another level, they actually operate their minds seem to operate on a completely different level to certainly how mine did at the same age.
Derry Simpson
And just the jobs that that, you know careers they're studying for no it's nothing like, our bubbles were little.
Our bubbles were little and contained to our community. You'd have a fight with a friend at school you'd go home angry and grumpy. You'd detach totally and 24 hours later you'd go back and you'd start again.
They don't have that off switch anymore, that world is so much bigger. That bubble is so much bigger for them.
Derry Simpson
I was having a conversation with someone the other day and we were recalling, and this really is going to show my age, the old rotary telephones that you'd have that were plugged into the wall.
MAK
With the cords that went under the door so mum and dad couldn't hear you conversation.
Derry Simpson
You always thought mum and dad couldn't hear the conversation, but we both know that they heard every word.
But more than that, the fact that when you actually rang someone's house, it was always their mother or father that picked up the phone. So you had to get through mum or dad before you even got to the friend on the phone.
And you knew when you got to the friend that everyone was going to hear the conversation anyway.
So in terms of the way that we communicated with our friends and our families, it was always very, I guess, limited.
It was always very contained, it was always very public, and for these young people most of their conversations happen in another world right?
Their on their phones and they're on Snapchat and they're talking mainly via text or message.
Derry Simpson
Where you can't understand tone and you can't interpret as easily what people are saying yeah.
MAK
And the words aren't coming out of your mouth yeah it's very easy to type something that you wouldn't be able to say so they're actually communicating with each other in a really artificial, not a real world environment.
And that surely has got to be a huge issue here as well.
Derry Simpson
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think it's also, when I think about our staff at Youth Focus, we've got a really young staff cohort, lots of our counsellors, I'm like grandma in there. You know, we've got 75% of my staff are under 40 or, you know, sort of very late 30s, early 40s.
And I think it's because they can, more so than me, they can have a better understanding or more empathy because they were kind of born on the cusp of this generation coming through.
And it's young people helping young people and being led by what they need rather than us kind of dictating, you know, ‘back in our day, this is how it happened’ and ‘you just need to put your phone away’ because it doesn't work.
MAK
No, and we would have, we really have no idea of the pressures that they face.
And you want to understand and you want to feel like you have that, I guess, that connection with your child in terms of, you know, being there for them for whatever they're going through but I don't know that we really are able to do that.
Derry Simpson
No I think we need to be led by them.
MAK
Yes and it's quite confronting when you're thinking about being led by your children.
Derry Simpson
Sure is.
MAK
I want to circle back to your story because I've thought that the work that you do must be fairly confronting in some ways for yourself because you're working and you're journeying with a lot of young people who don't want to live whereas when you look at your own mothering story you found yourself in a situation where you were desperately trying to do exactly the opposite which is save the life of your child when they were diagnosed at a very early age with cancer.
So you're in this battle for life, tell me a little bit about all of that.
Derry Simpson
Yeah, I think it's a bit of a battle with the system in some ways.
You'll find, particularly in my area, in not-for-profits and in health, people come to it for a reason.
Generally a personal experience or a strong passion for helping, which you're right, that's exactly me. I was living in the world of advertising and media prior to that.
MAK
Who'd do that?
Derry Simpson
I know, right?
MAK
Who'd do that? Come on.
Derry Simpson
That was my world until my number two came along and was diagnosed at three months of age with a really rare cancer.
And I remember sitting the first day with the oncologist and he said, ‘I wish it wasn't this because if it was leukemia or anything else, I'd have a thousand support groups and answers and books and, you know, flyers to give you but we're kind of on this journey of learning together’, which is pretty confronting when you've got a three month old.
Derry Simpson
I can't even imagine it as a mother that it's your worst nightmare.
MAK
Yeah. Yep. And it's it feels very surreal now.
It feels like a very long time ago and he's great and he's, you know, a million bucks and he's decided he's going to be an AFL footy player and he's tough and you'd never, you would never by looking at him, imagine the journey that he's been on.
But yeah, for the first five or six years, it's kind of you battling a system, making sure he's getting the right care, making sure, you know, you're at the top of the list or when he needs it and you can walk in the door he's seen straight away.
It's what every parent with a sick kid kind of goes through, but it does for me, it made me want to get in and do good and help and be on the other side of the solution.
And I think I've heard many stories like that. And, you know, mine wasn't in cancer. I spent some time in child health with Children and Kids Institute.
But it's kind of led me to this as my kids have got older too, I guess.
You know, I've got teenagers now and this stuff is the stuff, you know, their mental health and the mental health of their friends and conversations that you have with mums and dads when you're dropping kids off and picking them up.
It's always far more about their mental and emotional resilience rather than his physical health necessarily now.
MAK
Do you find that a bit tough to reconcile that there are so many children that fight to live and fight so hard and don't win that battle?
We've obviously both had intersections with Telethon and you see that heartbreakingly so often.
And then you have these young people with everything to live for who decide that they don't want to fight. How do you reconcile those two things?
Derry Simpson
Well, look, it certainly makes you hug your kids a little harder every night and it makes you prioritise resilience with them. I think it very quickly shapes how you parent.
We at Youth Focus, we have offices all over the state, all from Albany through to Meekatharra.
So lots of different, you know, socioeconomic groups, lots of different little country towns, lots of different things that, you know, happen with family.
And you'll find that youth mental health, it's very rare that a young person will come into somewhere to see us and that it's just a mental health thing.
That it's so much more complex than that there's often other things going on at home, there could be intergenerational trauma, there could be family domestic violence issues, there could be other things with you know other family members going on. It's very rarely just a case of ‘I don't like my friends at school’ or ‘I'm not fitting in’ or I'm you know so it's, we're finding the complexity of the cases that we're seeing just getting more and more and more every day too.
So it sort of changes you know you look at your own kids and then you look at some of these kids that are going through these incredibly complex kind of issues and it sort of puts a lot of it into perspective for you.
MAK
Well the stories must break your heart.
Derry Simpson
Yeah they can, they can, but there's also equally just as many wonderful amazing stories you know you see these young people that start off with our service and they go on and just do phenomenal things or, you know, go on to just feel good about themselves and give back to other young people.
We have a lot of youth reference groups through our centres. So they're young people that have kind of been on the journey with us and want to come back and support others in a mentoring kind of capacity.
And they're just incredible young people.
MAK
If you had to, and this goes back to the why, if you had to pick the top thing or the main thing that you think, causes despair in our children, in our young people, what would be that one thing that keeps coming up as a reoccurring issue for them?
Derry Simpson
I think it would be really hard to pin down one thing. I think there's a lot of pressure on our young people to achieve these days. Some of it comes from themselves, but a lot of pressure on them from a world around them.
And I think that social media piece really drives that and fosters that.
There's just no break for them. There's no way to disconnect from the world around them and I think that constant sense of pressure can be really debilitating for young people.
MAK
And how do these young people find you, so talk to me a bit about the services you offer and how young people come to you.
Derry Simpson
Yeah so all sorts of different ways, one of the biggest referral pathways is actually schools probably about 50% of the young people that we see will come through schools and schools referring into us.
We have, I call them an army, there's not that many but as many as we can possibly afford to have of counsellors and clinicians out in community so I don't like the idea of expecting young people to have to come to us.
We need to be where they are.
So we're in about 50 odd schools throughout WA. So high schools that will put counsellors in a couple of days a week and in that setting, they get to know the young people. They're just there. They've kind of become part of the furniture. They strike up conversations.
It's a lot easier for a young person to reach out for help in an environment they feel safe.
So that's a big part of kind of our solution and you know we talk about increasing accessibility of our service and that is one of the big strategies for us, is the more counsellors that we can get out into community, into schools, into any other setting where young people are and then if they want to they come back into us or they continue to see us at school but that's just you know we reach out far and wide as we possibly can to take the pressure off them having to come to us.
MAK
Because that's scary and that's, you know, that requires a lot of courage.
And I don't know if it's, do you think it's viewed as being an acceptable thing to do, to reach out for help?
Derry Simpson
So much more now.
I mean, there's so many wonderful organisations in WA doing that kind of part of the jigsaw, you know, raising awareness of mental health, trying to reduce the stigma I guess our role and we do a lot of that in our education programs at schools but our role is kind of, you know, once those young people go ‘hey actually I need help’ and put up their hand they need somewhere to go and that's our job.
It's great to do the awareness raising piece but the worst case would be to have a whole lot of young people putting up their hands, which is currently what we've kind of got in Australia, with nowhere to go and long waiting lists and multi-millions of dollars that parents are spending forking out from the private kind of sector.
Having that service that's available that doesn't charge them, that is everywhere, that lets them walk in the door, that's kind of the mission that we're on.
MAK
Well it's game changing and what are your wait times like and what sort of demand is there for your services?
Derry Simpson
Oh look the demand is never ending we try very very hard not to have wait lists. By the point in time where you can't, you know, from once you're in that acute kind of care, so that high end you're needing facilities and beds and hospitalisation. There are long waiting lists in this state.
We intervene a lot earlier than that so we know that by the age of 25, about 75%, if anyone's going to have a mental illness, 75% of them, all the symptoms will have appeared before the age of 25.
So the younger you can start, the better chance you have.
You might have a little wobble. It might be at the age of 12 or 13 or 14 it's a bit of anxiety, it starts to kick in. If we can start working with young people then, give them the tools to help understand and help them with their resilience toolkit we can stop it turning into mental illness so if we start there we've got a much greater chance so that's kind of our bullseye and in that case we will have walk-ins in most, if a young person is brave enough to walk in that door we will see them then and there.
The worst thing we could do would be to turn them away because they might not come back MAK like I would never want to risk that, so we have walk-ins in all of our centres.
If a mum rings, for instance, and says ‘I think my young person might need some help’ they'll go through the intake process. The maximum I’d like to think is about three weeks before we've got them sitting with someone so we really try and keep that period, as short as we can because it's our best possible chance to kind of put up the flag and say we're here to help.
MAK
How young are some of the children that you're seeing?
Derry Simpson
Our age bracket is 12 to 25 it's sort of at that point where there is a level of independence from mum and dad, there's certainly children, there's services that are that are young, younger than ours but that's always kind of you know we work with youth because it's what we're good at doing.
MAK
But all of this takes money.
Derry Simpson
It certainly does.
MAK
It takes a lot of money.
And for you, there is one seminal linchpin in your fundraising, which is the Ride for Youth.
Now, this is a bit of an institution in our town, it's become a bit of a thing, I must say.
It started off very small, I know a bit about the history of it because through Telethon, obviously, when I was there, there was a lot of funding work done with Youth Focus and it's grown and grown and grown.
To the point now where you're bringing in several million dollars every year and I must say it's become quite a thing on the terrace where it's really the fundraising event of the year for many of the business people in town and it sounds like it's not that difficult to task hopping on a bike and going for a ride down south.
There are worse things that you could do however it is quite a journey, isn't it? It is quite an adventure. Tell us about.
Derry Simpson
I'm not sure I would get on the bike itself.
MAK
No, in fact, you haven't.
Derry Simpson
I haven't.
No, I declare I haven't. But they start training five months out from the ride and I think the stat that Peter Trench shared with us was by the time they get on their bikes to actually start the ride, they've already ridden an average of 7,500 kilometres just in training alone.
So that's the equivalent of riding from Perth to Melbourne before they actually start the ride.
The ride is 700 kilometres itself so that goes from Albany to Perth, so we bus them all down to Albany and they start the journey there and the journey is four days of solid riding back home to Perth. Five days by the time they're in into Perth.
Yeah to raise money but more importantly they stop at schools along the way and I think if you talk to our riders that's the bit that that they love the most.
The riding, by the time they've done all that training, the riding's just the ride. But they stop at schools and they share their stories about mental health.
And it's incredible to see the connections that they have with the young people as they pass through.
We'll get, you know, schools that will bring 200 kids in to sit and listen to a rider share their story.
And then the young people have the opportunity to kind of ask questions at the end.
And it's just great to see the connection between the riders and the young people.
I think both get as much out of it as each other.
MAK
I've got friends that have done the ride and they've found it completely transformative, the community that they have found amongst the other riders.
But more, that journey with the young people that they meet on the way who also share their stories so candidly.
It's been for some of the people that I know quite life-changing for them, they certainly feel like they get so much more out of it then…
Derry Simpson
Then they put in? Yeah we often hear that.
I think many years ago, it's 23 years old now this ride's been going for 23 years, I think we've got still a couple of riders that have been there since the beginning so this will be their 23rd year.
I think our oldest riders is about 83 or 84 years of age and our youngest is 18.
We've actually got one family that spans three generations so grandparents, parents and children all riding together, so it's really gorgeous.
And years ago I think, they'd go into a school and they talk about mental health and raising the awareness and then they'd ask for questions and most of the questions they'd get from the kids were why do you shave your legs and how much was your bike and how far have you ridden.
It's so different these days the conversations are all about mental health and you have these incredibly brave young people getting up in front of all of their peers and asking you know big questions and sharing their own stories with the riders and then quite often, you know, at the end of the one of our riders will get up and share their journey and a lot of our riders have either had personal experience with mental health or they've lost a family member or they've you know had a friend that's gone through their own journey and they're brave enough to get up and share that story and you can hear a pin drop in in those rooms when they do.
But we take counsellors with us and the schools that we visit, we have clinicians in those schools.
And afterwards, because the young people often will have almost at every stop two or three young people reach out for help after we've been through.
That's the greatest gift of the ride is that at every stop along the way we have young people putting up their hand for help and we're there to help them.
And I think that's the bit that the riders really get the greatest joy out of.
MAK
And it's brilliant for blokes.
Derry Simpson
Yep.
MAK
Because blokes often find it hard to be open about these issues, to feel comfortable and to feel like they can just be.
Derry Simpson
And then you look at the suicide statistics and it's three times more likely for young men than it is for young women.
MAK
Well, young men and young men in the regions.
Derry Simpson
Absolutely.
MAK
And this ride spans all the way from Albany right back up to Perth, so they're really travelling through the heartland pf where young men, particularly, need this kind of support.
Derry Simpson
Absolutely and some of these towns have had you know some pretty tough years.
Quite often we'll get then they'll have flags out the front and you know the principal will come and say this is the kids favourite day of the year and it's something they will really look forward to which it's great given what we're talking about.
MAK
It's so much more than just getting on a bike.
Derry Simpson
Oh absolutely that bit, the riders say, not I, but they say it's the easy bit.
MAK
I do note that you haven't done the ride yet. So, I know you have a very important role in keeping everybody together and functioning.
However, is it something perhaps at some stage that you'd consider doing?
Derry Simpson
Maybe one day.
The advice I've been given is finish the job of the CEO first and then do the ride. Don't try and do them together.
So I might keep it with that.
MAK
That's fair enough you've got some fundraising to do. Tell me in the 23 years what's the total amount that you've raised?
Derry Simpson
About $32 million.
MAK
$32 million!
Derry Simpson
It's incredible isn't it? And because that's untied funds it goes straight back into community so we're very focused and we've made a commitment to the riders and the ride community that for those dollars that are raised through all that hard work, it's about putting counsellors into schools and counsellors into centres in the regions that we go through.
There's not a huge footprint of support out there in the regions.
In some of those areas, it's really our counsellors on the road each day and going into schools is the best chance otherwise, we've got young people driving 200 kilometres to get to the next service.
So that's where the money goes, and you can see the difference it makes.
MAK
Do you know how many young lives you've touched? Is it possible to actually calculate that?
Derry Simpson
No, not off the top of my head. I know there's about 30-odd thousand young people that have been involved in the stories, so, you know, part of those visits.
So, yeah, about 30,000 I think, in that time. But in terms of young people that have reached out for help, I don't know.
MAK
So this year, do you have a fundraising total in mind?
Derry Simpson
Oh, always over $2 million, MAK.
MAK
Always over $2 million?
Derry Simpson
Yes, that's our target.
MAK
The magic $2 million.
Derry Simpson
The magic $2 million.
MAK
How are you tracking and how can people support you?
Derry Simpson
So far we're tracking okay.
MAK
But you could always do with more, of course.
Derry Simpson
We can always do more. We can always do more.
There's always more counsellors that we could have out there helping.
So, look, it's the Hawaiian Ride for Youth website is the easiest way, you can have a look at all the teams and the riders, there's no doubt you will recognise someone because, as you say, there's about 150-odd riders this year.
Or the Youth Focus website, either or.
MAK
My last question is maybe the most difficult.
I want to ask you, if you had one wish, only one wish, what would that be?
Derry Simpson
Oh wow that's a big question, one wish, that for every young person that puts up their hand for help there's someone there to help them.
MAK
That's a great wish. Good luck with the ride, congratulations on the amazing work that you do and yes keep going and may all the forces be with you.
Derry Simpson
Thanks MAK thanks for having me.
Music
MAK
If this conversation has raised issues or if you feel like you need someone to chat with, the number for Lifeline is 13 11 14.
To enjoy future episodes, follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts and on our social media channels.
Remember, if you can choose to be anything, choose to be kind.
This podcast was recorded on Wadjak Noongar land.
We acknowledge the traditional custodians and pay respects to their elders, past, present and future.
Notes
Find out more about supporting young Western Australian people and their mental health on the Youth Focus website.
Learn more about the Hawaiian Ride For Youth on the Ride for Youth website.
If you need urgent support, or someone to talk to, phone 13 11 14 to reach Lifeline. This is a 24-hour telephone counselling service. You can also access online chat or text messaging options, refer to the Lifeline website.
In an emergency, phone 000.