Mental health issues making up one in five visits for paramedics in Victoria: report

Victoria’s paramedics were called to more than 20,000 incidents involving depression or anxiety in 2013, new figures show, revealing just how confronting it can be for those dealing with it on the frontline.

The research, conducted by mental health advocacy group Turning Point along with ambulance services, also revealed paramedics attended more than 16,000 cases of self-harm across the state.

According to Beyond Blue, 3 million Australians are living with depression or anxiety.

Dr Belinda Lloyd from Turning Point said it was the first time they had been able to quantify the number of people who were self-harming or taking their own lives, and the effect it had on responders.

“It’s unfortunate but true that these kinds of events and these kinds of harms are quite common in our community, and that’s what we found in this research,” she said.

“But we tend not to talk about it and most people either directly or indirectly have been touched in their lives by self harm and suicide, mental health.

“To have those discussions and to create an environment where people can actually communicate how they’re feeling, but where people feel comfortable asking and supporting and responding to people when they’re experiencing those feelings or are in crisis, [that’s] really important to start addressing the issue.”

Responding to mental health issues ‘very confronting’

Paramedic Simon Thomson said he had seen his fair share of the tragic side of mental health.

“It’s obviously confronting for paramedics to be seeing patients who have self-harmed, and no doubt very confronting to see people who have committed suicide,” he said.

“It makes up a fair portion of our paramedics work – people with mental health and substance-related issues makes up one in five of the patients we see.”

Data was also collected from Queensland, New South Wales, Tasmania and the ACT over a four-month period, and showed similar figures to Victoria.

“Across the country, the numbers are far greater and if we look at self-harm mental health and substance abuse-related attendances overall, we’re talking about around a 20 per cent of all ambulance attendances are related to those kinds of presentations,” Dr Lloyd said.

She said while mental health was now being discussed more openly, the stigma around the issue remained.

Dr Lloyd hoped the data could help improve services provided to people facing mental health issues and also those providing medical assistance.

“We have information around locations, geographical information around the demographic of the patient and also the context in which that crisis event has occurred, so stresses that might be happening in people’s lives in the lead up to presentation,” she said.

“So using that information together really gives us a great opportunity to look at how we can better respond to individuals before they reach that crisis point.”