Victorians’ mental health suffering under lockdowns

Victorians have had enough. Their state is in the grip of a mental health crisis, which is not news to those who have endured months of one of the strictest coronavirus lockdowns in the world. Month after month the restrictions, curfew, loneliness and anxiety about health, jobs, businesses destroyed, holding on to homes and children’s wellbeing and education have taken a heavy toll. This will not be a surprise to many Victorians’ families and friends interstate and overseas who have seen the impact of the heavy-handed response on loved ones.

Some of the scale of that impact has now been quantified. Calls to the support lines of Beyond Blue are 77 per cent higher in Victoria than across the rest of the country. Calls to Kids Helpline and Lifeline also have soared. Eating disorders among young people are up by a third. Since March there has been a 15 per cent increase in the number of Medicare-subsidised mental health services delivered, as Simon Benson reports on Wednesday. In a state of 6.5 million people, $819m in benefits has been paid for 7.4 million services. Between September and October alone, more than 350,000 Victorians sought access to Medicare-funded GPs, psychiatrists, psychologists and counselling treatments. It will be cold comfort to Victorians that the World Health Organisation now is urging governments not to use lockdowns as their primary method of controlling the spread of COVID-19. The WHO says strict restrictions have had a dramatic adverse effect on lives, especially in exacerbating poverty.

The virus has not gone away. Victoria recorded 15 new cases on Monday and 12 cases on Tuesday, one fewer than NSW, which had 13 but without the restrictions that have crippled Victoria. Premier Daniel Andrews, to some extent, is at last acknowledging that it may be necessary to reopen the economy with higher daily case numbers than originally planned: “It may be at a point where we have to call it, where we have to say that this is as good as it will get — that means there is some greater risk, that means that the task of keeping this thing suppressed will be harder,” he said on Monday. Health authorities have said the 14-day average had to be about five cases for the government to consider easing restrictions significantly on Sunday. But, as Mr Andrews said on Tuesday, 10 might have to be the new five, and five the new zero. The 5km radius rule should be dropped. So should rules prohibiting business activity, including keeping the doors of most retail stores, restaurants, cafes and pubs shut. As in other states, COVID-safe plans would need to be put in place and supervised. But Mr Andrews has been sending mixed signals, adding to confusion and frustration. If Melbourne opened up now, he said on Tuesday, the city would be open for only a short period before rising cases would shut it down again. “That is not the strategy,” he said. “That’s not what people want. It’s not what I’m prepared to settle for.”

Despite Mr Andrews’ purported determination to protect public health, revelations continue to emerge from the hotel quarantine inquiry exposing gross failures of governance. Health officers critical to the oversight of the ill-fated hotel quarantine scheme received just one hour of online training, as Ewin Hannan reports on Wednesday. In a final submission to the inquiry, Wilson Security said it was not until June 22 — three months into the scheme, and after the Rydges and Stamford hotel outbreaks — that Department of Health and Human Services staff met the company to discuss Wilson’s infection control and prevention arrangements at the hotels. Until that time, the DHHS had no idea that Wilson had established infection screening procedures such as temperature testing. The DHHS then told Wilson of its intention to introduce similar procedures across the program and asked for details. There were no outbreaks at hotels where Wilson Security operated. But under minimal or non-existent DHHS supervision, outbreaks at hotels overseen by other companies led to Victoria’s second wave of the virus, which has cost almost 800 lives and devastated the state and national economies.

If, as Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton says, the state’s remaining chains of transmission are some of the trickiest in the world, DHHS staff will need to be far more efficient in avoiding a third wave of infection than they were in overseeing hotel quarantining. Professor Sutton says although NSW recorded more virus cases than Victoria on Tuesday, the circumstances were very different. He should take the long-suffering public into his confidence and explain. Why is controlling the virus so much harder in Melbourne than in Sydney? Despite Mr Andrews’ daily press briefings, Victorians feel alienated from decision-making. As federal Health Minister Greg Hunt says, the mental health impact of prolonged lockdowns is severe. Victorians need to see a light at the end of the tunnel and an effective plan of testing, tracking and isolation in the event of small outbreaks that will allow the state to function while living with COVID-19. That light remains elusive.