Ambulance Responses to Men’s Mental Health: A National Study

Beyond Blue and Movember funded a research project that aimed to quantify the number and characteristics of acute male mental health presentations to ambulance services, and to identify ways to improve responses. The report of the project is titled “Beyond the Emergency: A national study of ambulance responses to men’s mental health” and includes a number of useful findings. The researchers looked at data from Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales, the ACT, Queensland and the Northern Territory from 1st of July 2014 to 30th of June 2017. They also conducted a survey of paramedics to understand their experiences of these presentations.  There were 112 637 attendances examined, with 60% of these involving alcohol and other drugs. In more than half the cases, the men were aged between 18 - 44 years, and the majority (57.5%) of attendances occurred between the hours of 6pm and 6am. In 42% of cases there had been multiple ambulance attendances.

Download “Beyond the Emergency: A national study of ambulance responses to men’s mental health” (4.8MB PDF)