nib foundation commits $750,000 to Lifeline to help reach more Australians before crisis

nib foundation and Lifeline Australia has today announced a three-year $750,000 partnership focused on prevention and postvention mental health support for Australians.  

The first-of-its-kind project will enable Lifeline to develop and deliver their ‘Lifeline Toolkit’ - a personalised support toolkit that offers online self-help resources, articles, stories, and support tools for Australians to help them better manage their mental health and wellbeing. 

Lifeline Australia Chief Executive Officer, Colin Seery said the development of this self-help tool is in response to 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 mental health support.  

“Our strength at Lifeline is crisis support. However, this isn’t the only type of immediate support people look to us for,” Mr Seery said. 

“This partnership with nib foundation allows us to validate and build products that enable us to better support anyone coming to Lifeline to seek help. This may be assistance in better understanding what they’re going through, strategies to help them look after their mental health, crisis support or some direction on ways to manage and access help,” he added.  

In the past 12 months, Lifeline has experienced unprecedented demand for crisis and mental health support and a significant increase in the use of their online services.  

“We’ve seen a 32% increase in visitation to our website and a 64% increase in website traffic to our mental health factsheets and crisis support pages. This is on top of the record 1.12 million calls received from Australians needing support,” Mr Seery said. 

“The statistics speak for themselves, and we hope that by delivering this personalised self-led tool with nib foundation, we'll reduce the barriers associated with help-seeking and empower individuals to seek support earlier before reaching crisis point,” he added.   

nib foundation Executive Officer, Amy Tribe, said the partnership’s focus on early intervention and prevention was extremely important.  

“We recognise the value of having easily accessible early touch points in a person’s mental health experience that can help to empower them to play a proactive role in taking regular care of their health and wellbeing. This tool will help users to do just this, by allowing them to take ownership of their experience and create their own personalised ‘hub’ where they can save off useful resources to refer to as they need,” Mrs Tribe said.  

“It’s a fantastic initiative and an opportunity for us to continue our partnership with Australia’s most recognised mental health service to help equip Australians with the right tools and resources they need to maintain their health and wellbeing and avoid the long-term impacts of poor mental health,” she added.  

nib foundation has been in partnership with Lifeline since 2020, providing $500,000 in funding in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding enabled Lifeline to expand their crisis text-based service, Lifeline Text, to meet the increase in demand for their services during the pandemic.