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Helplines receive $450m more for distress calls

Helplines receive $450m more for distress calls


National helplines responding to mental health crises have been granted almost half a billion dollars in new federal funding to deal with a rising number of distress calls, in what Health Minister Mark Butler acknowledges needs to be the first step of many.

The funding for Lifeline, Beyond Blue, Kids Helpline and Indigenous service 13Yarn comes in addition to a previously announced $43.9 million boost through to June 2025.

Speaking on ABC Radio National yesterday, Butler acknowledged that the shortage of psychologists, especially in rural areas, had shifted the burden onto telephone counselling services.

"[It's] challenging because we don't have enough psychologists in Australia, so we can't just shift a whole lot of psychologists into our suburbs and rural Australia, which is why that in the budget we had hundreds and hundreds of additional scholarships and training places for new psychologists," he said.

Non-profit crisis service Lifeline received more than a million calls in 2022-23, a 36 per cent increase in answered calls and a 28 per cent increase in text conversations.

Mental health groups have urged the government to focus on the system's "missing middle" people with mental illnesses who need more than 10 psychologist sessions but are not yet at crisis point for hospital admission.

"That is really the concerning [and] growing area of need in the country," Butler said.

Butler controversially cut the number of Medicare-subsidised psychology sessions from 20 to 10 in December last year after a government review of the system found wait times for services and patient gap fees had blown out, exacerbated by a shortage of psychologists.

"I'm really pleased that this year compared to last year, almost 50,000 additional people have been able to get into the system and get psychological therapy," Butler said.

While more people can access psychologists, the review found those with complex conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, persistent depression, schizophrenia and bipolar needed more than 10 sessions.

"Let's keep the 10 sessions in place for those with moderate mental health issues, but to those who have more complex issues, let's offer those 20 sessions," Australian Psychological Society president Dr Catriona Davis-McCabe said.

The affordability of psychological care and addressing the needs of people with complex issues was an area that Mental Health Australia chief executive Carolyn Nikoloski said needed more investment: "We know that the better access evaluation found that the additional 10 sessions exacerbated some of the existing inequities in the mental health system, so it's not the long-term solution."
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