COVID-19 and Australia’s Mental Health: Preventing pandemic distress through economic supports

Abstract

Mental health support services are overwhelmed. Expanded mental health funding and servicesannounced by the Federal Government and selected state governments are vitally important andwelcomed by the sector, but in many cases take time to be fully established. Temporary government funded economic supports, JobKeeper and the Coronavirus Supplementfor Youth Allowance and JobSeeker , introduced in 2020, played a key role in reducing mental ill health for Australians.

Despite the clear indicators of the worsening mental health crisis during the current 2021lockdowns, economic supports remain limited and hard to access. Economic supports which havebeen introduced during the current lockdowns do not have many of the key features that made the2020 schemes so successful, in terms of boosting the economy and supporting people’s mental health.