Mental Health Victoria chief executive officer Phillipa Thomas.
Official data shows Victorians’ use of alcohol and other drugs has dropped by 28 per cent since the pandemic, however other mental health risk factors including social isolation, family violence, financial insecurity and homelessness have all risen post-COVID.
Mental Health Victoria chief executive officer Phillipa Thomas said the insights of hundreds inside the sector warranted a review of whether the implementation of the royal commission’s recommendations were having the intended impact.
“If we’ve invested money in the first five years of reform with the assumption that it would change any of these metrics, and it hasn’t, what does that mean for the rest of our reform program?” Thomas said.
“Because we remain quite focused on the royal commission recommendations we might not be thinking enough in contemporary terms, or we might not be looking at what’s happening around us in real time to notice changes to make sure that we’re responding in the right way.
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“We still see things such as school refusal is very high, we know that eating disorders have increased… these are quite possibly the first signs of the downstream impacts of COVID that are popping up now, and we might find ourselves as a mental health system needing to respond to a lot of things that we didn’t predict.”
According to the mental health sector report released on Thursday, social isolation is the main driver of rising mental health issues, while cost-of-living pressures are also having a big impact.
More than $6 billion has been invested in the sector since 2018 and the Mental Health Levy, introduced in 2021, now contributes one-third of the state’s mental health output funding. But those operating mental health services report that they are not close to meeting demand, and are not seeing patients anywhere near as frequently or early as they need to.
Half of Victorians needing mental health help wait more than a month for an appointment, and most then have to pay more than $100 from their own pocket.
All levels of those involved in the mental health system agreed that children and young people, as well as those experiencing crisis, were in the greatest need of improved services.
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They also agreed that funding preventive and early intervention programs needed to become a priority, as well as better focused programs for the most critically ill.
Thomas said using data to adapt the royal commission recommendations to changing circumstances and rising needs would have a greater impact than continuing in a rigid rollout planned in 2021.
With workforce shortages set to continue impacting the ability to roll out new assets across the state, Thomas said realigning those already in the system – such as placing a 24/7 crisis assessment team in every health service – to the highest needs, needed to be made a priority.