Push for coaches to help relieve mental health crisisBeyond Blue...

  1. 5,485 Posts.
    lightbulb Created with Sketch. 4

    Push for coaches to help relieve mental health crisis

    Beyond Blue is pushing for a system of mental health coaches to be rolled out nationally to address the nation's unprecedented social crisis under the COVID-19 pandemic.

    As the nation's mental health services experience unprecedented call volumes from locked-down Victorians, "low intensity" mental health support is being proposed to help up to 450,000 people identified by the Productivity Commission as those who could benefit from the treatment.

    Beyond Blue has told the commission the hundreds of thousands of Australians with mild to moderate depression and anxiety could be treated by a network of mental health coaches trained to support people through cognitive behavioral therapy.

    Beyond Blue chief executive Georgie Harman.

    Beyond Blue chief executive Georgie Harman.

    The coaches would be supervised by professional clinicians, with a program to be established to help meet escalating need as Melburnians' mental health deteriorates under stage four lockdown.


    Beyond Blue's call has been backed by experts from the Australian Psychological Society and the Black Dog Institute.

    The service, which is already operating in some parts of the country, would effectively be free to clients, as the charge for sessions would be capped at the Medicare rebate. It would allow regional Australians with limited access to clinical professionals a first port of call for mild-to-moderate mental health issues.

    Those identified as experiencing issues too severe to be addressed with coaching would be referred to psychologists and psychiatrists.

    On Thursday, the national mental health body released figures showing two in three calls to the Coronavirus Mental Wellbeing Support Service nationally were coming from Victoria, up from 43 per cent in June.

    In the week to Thursday, there was a 21 per cent increase in visits to the organisation's digital coronavirus support site; more than half of those were from Victorians, the highest traffic volume from any state or territory since the pandemic began. During the pandemic, 900,000 people have used Beyond Blue's online support forums.


    "Put simply there will never be enough psychologists and psychiatrists to service the mental health and wellbeing needs of all Australians," said Georgie Harman, CEO of Beyond Blue.

    "Part of the answer is scaling up the workforce of mental health coaches who provide evidence-based support to the hundreds of thousands of Australians with mild to moderate anxiety and depression."

    In July, when Melbourne and Mitchell Shire were back in stage three restrictions to limit the spread of coronavirus, contacts to Beyond Blue about anxiety spiked 50 per cent and contacts about depression doubled.


 
arrow-down-2 Created with Sketch. arrow-down-2 Created with Sketch.