For Rohingya teenager Mohammed Alam, the pressure of year 12 study is just one concern weighing on his mind.
Along with managing deadlines and long nights at the library, his brain is juggling painful childhood memories of living at a refugee camp in Bangladesh.
But when Mohammed sought help from a counsellor in his new home of Australia, he said "it didn't feel very welcoming".
It was this challenge of trying to overcome mental health issues in a foreign country that gave Mohammed an idea.
"I would love to open up a clinic especially for those from a culturally linguistic diverse background," he said.
"The Rohingya people have seen and gone through a lot.
"I see common symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorders, which are very severe mental illnesses that need immediate help from clinics and psychologists."
Culture shock pushing people into silence
Across the Northern Territory, people from cultural and linguistically diverse backgrounds have also struggled to connect with psychologists on a deep level.
Elnaz Saki, a PhD student at Darwin's Charles Darwin University from Iran, said she felt compelled to bottle up her issues because she couldn't find appropriate mental health support.
“If you cannot find that person, you prefer to be silent and not to talk any talk to anyone else, so that also has negative effects effect to your mental health.”
The latest report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows nearly 9 out of 10 psychiatrists work in major cities, exacerbating the shortage in regional areas.
Dr Sara Parsafar, a psychology lecturer also from Iran, said there was a distinct lack of cultural and linguistically diverse mental health professionals in the NT, despite the 2021 census showing Australia is getting more diverse.
“You can see how the problem is significant here in NT, because we have a high number of people from different cultural backgrounds living in a regional area where the access to the mental health services is limited,” she said.
“The NT has one of the lowest number of psychologists in Australia.
"You can do the calculation and you come up with a number of how many of those psychologists are from different cultural backgrounds.”
Mental health barriers a nationwide issue
The barriers to accessing mental health support in Australia have pushed some people to breaking point during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Phillip Armstrong, CEO of the Australian Counselling Association.
Mr Armstrong said many psychologists had "full books" of clients, and highlighted that counselling services were not covered by Medicare.
He said the crisis was particularly dire in the Northern Territory, where demand for services had increased in recent years.
According to a Counselling Association report, 77 per cent of territorians were now accessing mental health services, Mr Armstrong said.
"We've gone from one in four or one in five [territorians accessing services] to one in two, or one in three," he said.
Mr Armstrong said the problems were most acute in rural and remote areas, and among people from different cultural backgrounds.
“Our system is primarily geared to teaching Western modalities, on the assumption that the client is going to be Western minded and come from a Western culture," he said.
For aspiring psychologists like Mohammed, it's an obvious gap in the market.
