As we head into our sixth week of social distancing loneliness has begun to creep into many of our lives.
This has become a major national health crisis with counselling services across the country experiencing a much larger volume of calls.
As COVID-19 continues, both Kids Helpline and Lifeline Australia have been fielding calls for help never before experienced as anxiety spikes among people isolated by the pandemic.
Kids Helpline has answered one call every 69 seconds and has logged more than 26,500 cases by phone, webchat and email between April 1 to April 21.
That's a 40 per cent increase on the number of calls during the same period in 2019.
At the same time, Lifeline Australia chairman John Brogden said the service was receiving about 3200 calls a day, and more than half of those were related to anxiety and fear around the pandemic.
Peel counselling services have been experiencing similar patterns as PeelConnect chairman Ron Withnell said their counselling bookings have been full for several weeks.
"We certainly have an increased number of people coming in," he said.
"Every day we are full and we have other people trying to book all the time.
"We are currently open only two days a week but we would really like to open five days a week to keep up with demand."
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According to Kids Helpline, the main reasons people have been reaching out to mental health services during COVID-19 are due to unemployment and paying rent, caring for older relatives and an increased workload.
Concerns about isolation and uncertainty around the length of the pandemic are also compounding the stress.
With the McGowan government relaxing restrictions on gathering sizes from two to 10 people on Monday there are hopes this will relieve people's anxiety surrounding the uncertainty of when coronavirus rules will end.
