As Youth Week finished on Sunday, Youth Coalition of the ACT director Emma Robertson said the headspace ACT youth mental health service had a fivefold increase on previous years in the number of 12 to 25-year-olds making contact in January.

"They see a lot of people being quite stressed out, and it's often around school and achieving everything they want to, and if you remain in that anxious state long enough that can lead to depression," she said.

While young people reported being told to go to uni to get a "good job" and house, a changing economy and public service cuts made getting a foot in the workforce hard with or without a degree.

"Cost of living coupled with lack of employment, they would be the No. 1 thing," Ms Robertson said.

"In the ACT that gap between people who are employed or on the path to employment and those who are not is so big."

Sonione Wakabut Rogers, 20, of Kambah, lost two federal government jobs last year – in immigration and health – due to wider cutbacks.

"It is hard now, the budget the way it is there's not many advertising," he said.

The well-spoken former labourer said Canberra was a great place if you wanted to go to uni, but it was hard to pay the rent if you did not.

As migration out of the ACT increases, he said many of his friends who left school at 15 or 16 had headed to Sydney or Batemans Bay to chase work and cheaper rents, he said.

Ms Robertson said there was no known increase in the number of young Canberrans using illicit drugs.

But Dale Huddleston, a drug and alcohol outreach worker with the Gugan Gulwan Aboriginal Youth Corporation, said those who used were becoming more addicted than at any time in the last 15 years.

"Unfortunately, we've had four drug-related suicides in the last two months, aged between 17 and 25," he said.

The latest survey of young people by the Youth Coalition, in 2012, found nearly one-third rated anxiety as major issue. amily relationships were another leading concern.