This article is featured in The Canberra Times and is republished with permission.
Low-income earners are being told to go to Canberra's emergency departments for mental health aid as the high cost of psychology services prevents them accessing care.
Ainslie Percival said she's been told by multiple healthcare workers in Canberra to go to the emergency department for mental health aid.
The 39-year-old said she has contacted more than a dozen mental health clinics during the past six months, desperate to see a psychologist.
"I don't want to [go to emergency] because all we hear about is what strain they're under," she said.
"But there's no emergency [mental health] services, except the emergency services."
'So many cracks'
One social media user on Facebook described trying to get an appointment at a psychology clinic in Canberra as "a joke".
"You often don't hear back and basically have to harass people to even find out where you are on their lists," he said.
Another user said she was seeing a psychologist who lived seven hours away because she had so much trouble getting someone local.
Others described waiting months for an appointment, only to find out they'd been dropped from the waiting list.
And it's those with the least disposable income that are paying the price, according to Australian Psychology Society president Dr Sara Quinn.
"For the vulnerable out there, if they only have access to a certain limited number of sessions, then... they will limit the sessions," she said.
"And for those that have a critical need for that psychological care, often what we do see is that is overburdening the other crucial emergency services and that's actually costing the economy and the taxpayer far more."
Dr Quinn, who lives in Canberra, said the ACT's critical shortage of psychologists is being exacerbated by cost of living pressures.
She said longer waiting lists and difficulties finding a psychologist who hasn't closed their books have become commonplace.
"We're only meeting 35 per cent of the mental health need across the nation," Dr Quinn said.
For people like Ms Percival, who said she has been dependent on Centrelink payments since she broke her shoulder in late 2024, there are limited options for low-cost support.
She said she used Lifeline's 24-hour helpline and other charity resources when she's been in crisis or tried to lean on family and friends.
"Everything I do has to go through the public system because after rent and groceries, I don't have any money left for healthcare," she said.
"There's so many cracks that are so easy to slip through."
Waitlists full
Canberra has the highest ratio of psychologists to patients in the country, yet getting an appointment can still be extremely difficult.
More than 870 psychologists were working in the territory in 2022-23, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
The ACT had 191 psychologists for every 100,000 residents, compared to the second-highest rate of 139 in Victoria and 129 in NSW.
A 2023 report found the ACT had some of the longest wait times for psychologist appointments in the country.
Private clinics across Canberra had a wait time of between one week and four months for a new appointment in February 2025, depending on what services clients were seeking.
Evo Psychology owner Keira Allen said her clinic receives eight to 15 inquiries a week from people seeking help.
She meets weekly with her team in Mawson to assess the inquiries and try and get people an appointment.
"We're a fairly small team, there's five of us in the clinical team... and not a lot of space for new clients, unfortunately," she said.
"We've got a waitlist for each of our clinicians at the moment... we cap it at around six or eight people on each waitlist and they're usually all full.
"[It's] heartbreaking for us knowing people are waiting for help."
A Canberra Health Service spokesperson said the equivalent of 89.13 full-time psychologists were currently employed across the public system.
Wait times vary across the service depending on the department. Eight people were waiting to access the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in February, with an estimated wait time of six to 12 weeks.
Patients may wait five to six months to access eating disorder mental health care, with 41 people on the public waitlist.