Queensland Ambulance Service fields 180 mental health-related triple-0 calls a day

Mental health triple-0 calls to the Queensland Ambulance Service have increased at least 12 per cent in just three years, with an alarming rise in call-outs for young children.

The Queensland Ambulance Service is fielding up to 180 mental health-related triple-0 calls a day, with an alarming rise in call-outs for young children.

New figures show there has been a 12 per cent increase in mental health triple-0 calls in three years, with 52,000 in 2019 and 59,000 in 2020.

In mid-November there had already been 46,000 calls with authorities expecting the upward trend to continue.

QAS mental health response program director Sandra Garner said one in eight calls to triple-0 were now mental health related and the number of calls was increasing every year.

Sandra Garner, Queensland Ambulance Service’s mental health response program director at the Kedron operations centre. Picture: Steve Pohlner

The QAS receives about 150 to 180 calls per day for mental health issues and Ms Garner estimated 30 per cent of these were from youth who were as young as eight years old.

“Something that is a trend that we have been seeing is kids in distress,” Ms Garner told The Courier-Mail.

“That is distressing … we probably get called daily to kids who had either significant risk taking behaviours, attempted to take their own life or who are experiencing really high levels of anxiety.”

Ms Garner said the trend was down to a number of factors.

“The pandemic changed what school looks like for kids, even this year we had the prom cancelled and all of those types of things especially in southeast Queensland,” she said.

“We’ve also seen kids going through high school as well that have got the new tertiary entrance process that has been quite stressful for people, we’ve got all the normal social pressures that you and I had, we’ve got social media, all of those types of things are all meaning kids are ending up in really high levels of distress.”

At the same time mental health call-outs were increasing in 2019, a national survey of paramedics found they did not have the skills, knowledge or confidence to deal with mental health patients and emergencies, Ms Garner said.

The QAS introduced mental health clinicians into its operations centre who speak to both people experiencing a crisis and paramedics who might need help in treating a patient.

In October the clinicians cancelled 306 jobs and were able to provide an intervention over the phone.

The QAS also has a co-responder program which pairs senior mental health clinicians with a senior paramedic who respond to mental health emergencies.

They help with referrals to mental health teams, make safety plans and later check-up on patients to ensure they are getting help.

Assessments happen at people’s homes rather than at a hospital, Ms Garner said.

Along with the 12 to 15 per cent increase in mental health related calls in the last three years there has also been a 5 per cent increase in non-mental health callers who are later assessed as having a mental health condition.

This could include someone having chest pains but tests showing nothing despite them having shortness of breath and heart palpitations, meaning it could be a panic attack.

Ms Garner said a factor in mental health incidents increasing was from anxiety relating to the pandemic including lockdowns, vaccinations and home schooling.

Ms Garner said paramedics saw people with high levels of distress, high levels of poverty and social disenfranchisement and who didn’t have the skills to live independently.

The majority of callers have a single intervention and will never interact with a mental health service again.

The service was an important part of the crisis sector in mental health service.

“The QAS is almost the David Attenborough of the health system,” she said.

“We see it out there in real time and in real life and are dealing with it. I think that is no more evident than in mental health.

“We are seeing the environment that somebody is living in, the supports that are available to them, we’re seeing how this crisis looks in real time for a person. And that can look very different to when you see somebody almost in a petri dish of an emergency department.”