0:00
Welcome, Matthew, thank you for coming on today. To talk about some of the challenges that we’ve got in the mental health space, obviously, with the government restrictions as they are at the moment, and with people obviously being largely within their homes, and only with limited things that they can do in these present times. I was really interested in getting an insight into some of the mental health considerations, it has been something that perhaps there probably hasn’t been enough talk about, I feel with clients being focused on the day to days of simply being able to operate their businesses and work through the situations just to trade and just to provide for their customers as best they can. So I had a few sort of questions to go through. And I guess probably the first thing I would really like some insight on is for you to give me an understanding of what are you finding the common mental health challenges are at the moment? What is it that people are struggling with the most based on your understanding, and through the use of, you know, Alitus’s EAP program and People Sense? So what what insights have you got for us, Matt, in that regard?

1:16
Yeah. Thanks, Clint, as you mentioned, you know, we’re a national EAP provider. And so we’ve had a look at a lot of the data and statistics that are coming out of that. And it was obviously during the last 12 months that we started listing COVID-19 and other related causes for what for why people are presenting to us. So we actually have started tracking that data. And it’s interesting that we there is a significant spike, and increase continuing increase, particularly in this year, in COVID related stress, anxiety matters, we can dive into some of those, which is, you know, returning to the workplace and around vaccinations and things like that. But also, just more broadly, there, there’s been at least a 20% increase in the demand for our services. Yeah, which is significant on scale. That’s a lot of numbers. When we compare that, obviously, with the data coming through the likes of Lifeline, you know, from the numbers that they were looking at inquiries that they were fielding in 2019. There’s been a 30% jump in inquiries. So the writing’s sadly on the wall. And all of this, whether it’s particularly related to COVID or it’s just a matter of the glass getting too full for people that we can only bear so much. It is continuing to cause mental health strain and concern. And those usage numbers and the numbers of people reaching out different services is certainly going up.