The future is looking bright for Canberra teenager Mia Burton as she completes her final years of school.
The year 11 student from Macarthur, in the city's south, loves drama and writing, has two beautiful dogs and is a driven young woman, passionate about women's rights and gender equality.
But just last year, Mia found herself unable to leave her room, crippled by anxiety and struggling to see a way out.
"I was a very stressed anxious person; in simple terms, I was quite depressed," Mia recalled.
"I didn't want to go out, I wanted to stay in my room. I had no one to talk to and I just didn't see the point of living a life where no one cared."
Mia says she hit rock bottom when she began self-harming.
"I couldn't find something else to make it better so I started hurting myself," she said.
"Hurting myself, feeling bad about hurting myself and then because I felt bad, doing it again.
It was a confronting time for Mia's mother, Dominique Burton, too.
"I didn't know how to manage it. I didn't know what to say, or how to protect," she said.
But, while putting together a mental health plan for Mia with her GP, Ms Burton was told about an early intervention primary health care service in Tuggeranong called Teen Clinic, launched in early 2021 in Gordon.
She said it changed everything.
"It's a really valuable clinic," she said.
"We jumped at the chance at being the first patients to enter in through the Teen Clinic process."
The 'clinic for anything' saving lives
Now run by Directions Health Services as a six-month pilot program in a new location in Lanyon Valley, Teen Clinic provides teenagers with the opportunity to talk to a qualified nurse in a relaxed and non-judgmental environment, at no cost and without having to make an appointment.
It operates once a week, on a Thursday afternoon, within the YWCA Mura Lanyon Youth and Community Centre in Conder.
"Teen Clinic really is for anything," nurse Sandy Lendrum said.
"It is from a sore big toe all the way through to mental health, sexual health and those sorts of things.
Ms Lendrum operates the clinic together with Meghan Campbell, and both nurses share a passion for community outreach.
"Teachers sometimes refer, parents sometimes bring their kids, all are welcome," Ms Campbell said.
"It is really important that parents and carers and loved ones know that they are welcome at Teen Clinic as well."
For Mia, it has been life-changing.
"I could talk to them about anything and I did —it was like word vomit, and it just didn't stop," she said.
"I felt like I had somewhere I could belong."
Ms Burton praised the Teen Clinic nurses for creating a space that made her daughter feel comfortable, and for opening pathways for further medical and specialist treatment.
"It has opened opportunities for her to see somebody else and she is a lot stronger for doing that," she said.
"It's really hard to find those connections [to services] when you don't have a GP that has that ability — they often come across the same issues that you do, like wait times. You'll ring a psychologist and they'll say I'm sorry, we can see you in six months.
"It was a really beneficial program. Mia could go and talk to Sandy about anything."
Taking away isolation in Canberra's far south
Teen Clinic's home within the YWCA's Mura Lanyon Youth and Community Centre is fitting, considering Mura means Pathways in the Ngunnawal language.
But it was also set up there for a very specific reason: to leverage upon the centre's established relationship with nearby Lanyon High School.
Teen Clinic's location also makes it easily accessible for those young people facing physical barriers accessing health care elsewhere in Canberra.
"The buses aren't great [in Lanyon Valley], and for young people when they want health care, they are not going to travel far," Ms Lendrum said.
Modelled on similar Teen Clinics on the NSW South Coast, the Lanyon Teen Clinic has supported more than 20 teenagers since its re-launch at the start of this school year.
And, there are already requests for the nurse-led outreach to be expanded to other parts of the ACT.
"It is all about access," Ms Campbell said.
"I have been working in other teen clinics for about five years and I have seen some really amazing outcomes [when] communities get behind it.
"It is the best part of my week."
Mia still has bad mental health days, but she says accessing Teen Clinic helped give her the tools to help herself.
"If someone is treating me poorly I won't just let them. I won't put myself in that position that I was in for a very long time," she said.
And Mia now encourages others to ask for help, too.
"If you need help, don't be afraid to get it, because that is the most scary and important step, just asking for help," she said.
