Mental health boost for Victorians amid another two teen suicides in Victoria

Suicide rates among teenage girls hold steady but another two young men died in August amid Melbourne’s ongoing lockdown.

Suicide rates among teenage girls hold steady but another two young men died in August amid Melbourne’s ongoing lockdown. Picture: istock

Victoria’s state government will pump a further $22m into mental health services in a bid to tackle the psychological fallout from lockdowns.

Mental Health Minister James Merlino said the funding added to a $3.8bn commitment – partially funded by a payroll tax levy – in the May budget and is on top of $225m in previously announced funding.

“During the pandemic … we’ve had a greater number of emergency department presentations of young people in particular, with suicidal ideation and self harm,” Mr Merlino said.

“We’ve had a significant increase in eating disorders. So that’s all impacting and putting pressure on our emergency departments and that’s why … we know the pandemic has had an impact on top of what was already a broken mental health system,” he said.

Orygen Youth Health executive director Pat McGorry welcomed the announcement and he and Mental Health Victoria chief executive Angus Clelland had been consulted extensively.

“There was a big hole in between the royal commission starting to change things and turn things around and the emergency situation that we’re dealing with now in Victoria daily, with young people in particular being turned away from emergency departments in life-threatening situations,” Professor McGorry said.

Mr Clelland called for a similar commitment at a federal level.

“We gave the Commonwealth top marks last year for their very quick response a year ago in September … but conditions have changed very considerably since then,” he said.

Just over $13m will be spent on 20 pop-up community mental health services which is expected to provide an additional 93,000 hours of wellbeing checks and counselling from the end of September.

Another $4m will got to Aboriginal community controlled organisations.

An extra million will be go to expanding the Triple P program, which supports parents whose children are suffering anxiety and $1 million will go to providers including the Royal Children‘s Hospital and VicHealth.

As well, $1.2 million will be given to LGBT mental health support services including Switchboard, Thorne Harbour Health and Drummond Street Family Services.

It came after fresh data from the Victorian Coroners Court revealed suicide rates among teenage girls held steady in the past month but another two young men died in August amid an ongoing lockdown in metrop.

After The Australian revealed eight women under 18-years-old died by suicide in the seven months to July this year – up from one in the same period in 2020 – there were no further deaths reported in same gender and age group in the month to August 31.

There were another two deaths by suicide reported in men aged 18-years-old and below, with a total of seven young boys losing their lives so far this year. It compared with 10 deaths by suicide in the eight months to August 31 last year.

The total number of suicides — across both genders and all age groups — is down in 2021 compared with 2020.

There were 493 deaths by suicide in the year to August 31 2020 compared with 439 so far this year.

The data also revealed the majority of deaths occurred in metropolitan Melbourne. Sixty three per cent of suicides were reported in metropolitan Melbourne, while 37 per cent were reported in regional Victoria so far this year.