Victorian Mental Health Minister James Merlino
© Getty ImagesVictorian Mental Health Minister James Merlino.
More than 340 teenagers a week have been admitted to hospital suffering mental health emergencies, according to a confidential Andrews government report that reveals Victoria's pandemic and lockdown-fuelled youth crisis is worse than previously feared.

The tragic case load - recorded every week in the six weeks leading up to May 30 - is a 57 per cent increase on the same period last year, prompting calls from mental health experts for an immediate boost to services.

The Victorian Agency for Health Information (child and adolescent edition) reveals an average 342 children, aged up to 17, presented to emergency departments each week.

The 16-page report, obtained by The Weekend Australian, also reveals an average of 156 teens a week were rushed to hospital after self-harming and suffering suicidal ideation, an 88 per cent increase on last year.

The most serious cases, where teens required resuscitation and emergency treatment, surged to a six-weekly average of 37.3 cases to the end of May, an 83 per cent rise on last year and a 162 per cent increase on 2019, according to the report.

The report - marked confidential and not for publication, and which instructs doctors who receive the document in error to "destroy it" - has alarmed some child psychiatrists.


Comment: Isn't that interesting. Apparently this isn't information they want the public to be aware of.


"These numbers are unequivocally awful," a leading child psychiatrist said. "They show increased demand and they show no increase in services because services were already at capacity. Our units are completely over run.

"This surge is even bigger than I would have guessed. To see it measured so starkly and compare that to the policy and the ­response from the department overall, it is pretty shocking.

"It's one thing if the right people don't know about this stuff, but there has been a month-on-month demonstration about how much worse things have got over 18 months."

The May 30 report shows a marked increase in serious case numbers recorded in two earlier VAHI reports covering February-March this year and August-September 2020.

Mental Health Minister James Merlino's office has ­defended the government's ­record, saying $220m in extra funding had been committed since the pandemic started.

"We've never shied away from speaking openly about the mental health of Victorians - that's why we held a royal commission into our mental health system, to lay bare the cracks in our system that so desperately need reform, and why we've delivered the biggest investment in Australian history in mental health and wellbeing," a government spokesman said.


Comment: Then why was the report confidential?


Mr Merlino's office said the VAHI reports collated operational data to help the Department of Health and health services in planning priorities to meet changes in demand, and played down the confidentiality attached to the report saying ­"significant and regular mental health service reporting" was publicly available through other arms of government.

Senior child and adolescent psychiatrist Paul Robertson said there had been a surge in demand for teenage mental health services across Australia.

"There is a huge escalation in demand for mental health services in child and adolescent populations, not just here, but interstate, and nationally," Dr Robertson said. "There's a surge in demand around presentations to emergency departments with self-harm and suicidality in ­adolescents.

"It is particularly evident in the ED presentations around suicide risk and then that flows on to the service and what it needs to do and how much it is struggling to do that. The other presentation is really the increase in eating disorders which is as large or even bigger."

Despite the unfolding crisis, The Weekend Australian has been told by multiple mental health ­experts that a promised funding boost of hundreds of millions of dollars scheduled to be distributed to frontline psychiatric services in early August was not expected to be paid until September.

"It's now six months since the royal commission report and even now there is no money through," one mental health ­expert said. "There has been a delay, and this is money needed to fund additional services."

The government said mental health funding was delivered in regular phases and more than $160m was delivered to hospitals in July, with a further $155m to be provided in September.

The VAHI report confirms the pressure on youth mental health services, revealing the number of Medicare benefit scheduled treatments for children aged up to 17 hit a six-weekly average of 11,005 to May 16. This is a 36 per cent rise on the same period last year and a 13 per cent rise on 2019. Mental health bed occupancy has hit 85 per cent, according to the report, compared with 67 per cent in 2020 and 63 per cent in 2019.

Teenage eating disorders, which mainly strike young women, have also continued to spike with the report revealing that in the six weeks to April 25, an average of 332 cases were ­recorded, 14 per cent up on 2020.

Damon Johnston, Victoria Editor