Lifeline Australia

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Lifeline has experienced unprecedented demand for crisis and mental health support, with their digital services the most utilised. They receive 1 million calls each year, with a 20% year on year increase in website traffic. Their text/webchat traffic increased by 100% over a 12 month period in 2022-2023.

While Lifeline’s strength is helping people at point of crisis, they recognised a large unmet need in the community to provide information and support to those who are not currently at a point of crisis but would benefit from help and support.

To help Lifeline deliver a broader range of support services for Australians visiting their website, we committed $750,000 in funding over three years to enable Lifeline develop and deliver their Lifeline Support Toolkit

The toolkit enables users to take ownership of their experience and navigate self-help resources, articles, stories and support tools that they can use every day to maintain their mental health and wellbeing.

Lifeline’s toolkit aims to utilise technology to reduce the challenges associated with help-seeking, and to support individuals to identify and seek out help earlier within the crisis trajectory.

The project includes three long-term goals:

• Increased self-efficacy and resilience in individuals, helping them better self-manage their mental health.

• Less barriers (including self-stigma) to accessing support

• More people seeking appropriate levels of support

Past project

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken an unprecedented toll on the mental health and wellbeing of Australians, and with many young and Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples turning to text to find support, it’s important that a full suite of crisis support services are available for those in need.

In the first year of the pandemic, Lifeline Australia received almost 90,000 calls per month. While phone and chat services are available, funding constraints have previously seen Lifeline Australia limit their number of requests for support through Lifeline Text to 80 crisis interventions per day, leaving a significant proportion of people vulnerable. This includes those who prefer seeking help via non-verbal channels, or those living in remote and rural communities, who don’t have adequate access to landlines or poor internet connection, vulnerable.

Lifeline’s independent evaluation of Lifeline Text also found that 42% of people who reached out through text, wouldn’t have sought help another way. In addition, more than half of people seeking help via Lifeline Text are aged under 24 years and those who identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples make up 5.5% of users, despite representing 2.8% of the population in Australia. 40% of users also reported having a disability. This shows the obvious demand for their text services.

To help meet the increase in demand for mental health support and ensure a full suite of crisis support services are available to those in need, nib foundation and nib teamed up with Lifeline Australia to provide $500,000 in funding support. This - allowed the 24/7 crisis support and suicide prevention service to expand their crisis text-based service, Lifeline Text.

The extension of Lifeline Text has a helped support those living in rural and remote communities, who don’t have adequate access to landlines or internet connection. Increasingly, these barriers are often experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and with suicide rates almost double that of their non-Indigenous counterparts, access to mental health support services through a range of avenues is crucial.

The funding supported Lifeline to provide over 13,000 additional crisis interventions in 2020 and 2021 and helped Lifeline to train and manage 73 new volunteer crisis supporters. 

By supporting the expansion of Lifeline Text and ensuring a full suite of crisis support services, such as Phone, Chat and Text are available, we hope that no one falls through the cracks and that everyone is given the opportunity to access the mental health support they need, when they need it most.

In 2021, we also committed $750,000 over three years to allow Lifeline to develop their self-help toolkit. The toolkit will enable users to take ownership of their experience and navigate self-help resources, articles, stories and support tools that they can use every day to maintain their mental health and wellbeing.