About 25% of calls to the Northern Rivers Lifeline service last week were linked to anxiety about coronavirus.

Lismore’s Lifeline centre crisis support manager Niall Mulligan said the Northern Rivers Lifeline service had seen a surge in phone calls recently, mirroring a similar 20% increase in calls to the national Lifeline phone service.

“Normally, about 80% of our calls are about people feeling isolated,” Niall said. “Now they are just part of a growing number of people feeling isolated or anxious.”

Niall said the local service’s call centres are still open and operating as normal, but that the face to face service had shut down due to “the lack of people coming into it” and the Lismore suicide prevention collaborative training was on hold “until we find a way forward to do things online”.

“We are defined as an essential service so we can stay open, but if one of our volunteers gets diagnosed with coronavirus, we’ll have to shut the centre,” he said.

“It’s just one of many Lifeline centres nationally, but it’s a needed service.

“We are working on a business continuity plan for people to work from home if we need it here. 

“We’d prefer to be able to work from the centre, but any volunteer run organisation would struggle to find people who want to expose themselves to Covid-29

“It’s a different environment now – it’ s all unknown – we are just trying to manage it.

“Our fantastic volunteers come to centre to do shifts. They have a safe environment and use hand sanitisers – and there’s no cups of tea and chats any more - people just do the work, sanitise and go home, with all interaction removed.”

The Federal Government has recently announced that extra funding will be directed toward keeping Lifeline call centres open and operating, along with other free help services such as Kids Helpline.

If you need to talk to someone, you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800, Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636, Mensline on 1300 789 978 or 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 732.