Coronavirus: boost for services as anxiety at new highs

The Andrews government has announced an extra $59m in funding for mental health services as COVID-19 anxiety spreads.

A man gestures from his hotel room as he prepares to leave Melbourne’s Crown Promenade Hotel after spending two weeks in forced quarantine. Picture: AAP

The Andrews Labor government has announced $59m in funding for mental health services as Victorians flood the state’s support services amid widespread anxiety over the coronavirus pandemic.

The one-off injection came as Daniel Andrews announced the state-of-emergency order that empowers the stage-three restrictions in place in Victoria would be extended by four weeks.

Mental Health Minister Martin Foley said one in four calls to crisis hotline Lifeline was related to the COVID-19 lockdown, and non-profit depression organisation Beyond Blue said it expected a 30 per cent rise in the demand for its services by June. “The first is a whole series of supports for frontline organisations … that are day in, day out fielding an increasing number of calls from anxious, worrying and increasingly unwell Victorians in their mental health and wellbeing,” Mr Foley said.

Online and phone counselling services will receive $6.7m, and ­almost $7m will fund phone and video mental health support for people with severe illnesses in a bid to prevent relapses and emergency department presentations.

Another $18m will go to rolling out 170 acute ­mental health beds for youth and adult patients, a key recommendations from the royal commission into Victoria’s mental health system.

“The world as we know it has been turned upside down,” Mr Foley said. “And that has come at a time when our mental health system was already under enormous strain and stress.”

The Premier extended the state of emergency order to May 11, which grants Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton the power to restrict individual movement.