We’re safe. Great.

Thank you Dan Andrews, Gladys Berejiklian, Mark McGowan and Anastasia Palaszczuk. There are other Premiers and a Prime Minister, sure, but you four are the most responsible for ‘keeping us all safe’ from Covid-19 with your ‘fast and hard’ lockdowns, consequences be damned.

You are therefore also responsible for those consequences. Here is a looming one: the mental health crisis in our children, which is rapidly spiraling into a physical health crisis.

In this sit down with Dr Carolyne Bosak and David Limbrick MP we completely ignored the ballooning weight and other markers of sickness in our children associated with a sedentary and isolated lifestyle. We focused on the elephant in the room – exploding cases of depression, self harm, and suicide ideation caused by lockdowns. These are slowly being proven in the statistics and it was always going to take time because of the lag built into this type of data collection.

Harms from Covid-19 may be more immediate and therefore more apparent, but that does not mean they are more severe than what we must now watch unfold for the coming years. The emerging data showing the mental health disaster is not predicted to peak until mid 2022.

There is a long road to travel.

So, just how ‘safe’ did our governments keep us?

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental illness, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 https://www.lifeline.org.au