MELBOURNE, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) -- Half of Australian teenagers are projected to experience anxiety or depression by age 20, driven by bullying, poverty and racism, a new study warns.
The study, led by Australia's Burnet Institute, found that school-based initiatives, such as bullying prevention, racism education, and social and emotional learning that build resilience from early childhood, were the most cost-effective and impactful prevention programs, said a statement from the institute on Monday.
Interventions addressing early risk factors like child maltreatment and family financial stress also showed strong returns, according to the study published in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.
The study warned that young people exposed to bullying, racial discrimination, or maltreatment face about three times higher risks of developing common mental disorders.
"Real progress means preventing harm before it starts, by investing in interventions that address the conditions that put young people at risk, like poverty, abuse and discrimination," said Professor Susan Sawyer, study co-author and director of the Center for Adolescent Health at Australia's Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the Royal Children's Hospital.
The study's new modelling found that investing between 50 million and 1 billion Australian dollars (35.44 million to 710 million U.S. dollars) annually into prevention programs could prevent up to 787,000 young Australians from experiencing anxiety and depression by 2050.
This could deliver up to 74 billion Australian dollars (52.45 billion U.S. dollars) in societal economic benefits, the modelling showed. ■