Kids Helpline crisis interventions on the rise again towards COVID high

Kids Helpline says it had a 350 per cent increase in crisis interventions in 2025 compared to 2018. Kids Helpline says the number of young Australians needing immediate help is again growing after reaching a decade-high during the COVID pandemic. An annual report by the organisation revealed 5,190 young people needed crisis intervention in 2025, which was triple the decade's lowest year, 2018. The organisation says the intervention pattern appeared to be continuing in 2026. Link copiedShareShare articleKids Helpline has revealed a growing number of Australian children are again hitting a crisis point before reaching out for help. The 2025 Kids Helpline Impact Report showed the youth counselling service was contacted 128,998 times over the year, which was an average of 353 cases a day. Nationwide, 5,190 were classed as "crisis interventions". That meant an average of 14 cases each day required a Kids Helpline counsellor to contact emergency services or child protection because a young person was at immediate risk of harm. It was the second highest number in the past decade. The report said the data indicated a concerning trend back towards the COVID-era high of 5,829 interventions in 2021. "Young people are really struggling," Kids Helpline national service manager Leo Hede said. He said young Australians were trying to navigate complexities such as online safety and social media, while also being affected by the same world events as older Australians. "Cost of living, the younger kids and teens see their parents struggling and also, the impact that that has on their own lives," Mr Hede said. "A lot of young adults are reaching out to us and … they're at uni trying to juggle rent and studies and multiple jobs." He urged young people not to wait until issues become too difficult before reaching out for help. "We're available any time, any reason, and that could be just for a young person who's got something on their mind that they just want to talk it through, or they feel that something's not right and they just want to get that off their chest or to chat about what options they may have. The report stated that for the first time in the organisation's history, more young people used webchat to seek help, with 50 per cent of contacts made through the message service and 49 per cent via telephone. It said many young people felt safer typing rather than speaking about sensitive issues when their privacy may be limited or when they were seeking help late at night. While sextortion was not among the top 10 reasons for seeking help, Kids Helpline said there had been a 67 per cent increase in counselling for the issue and for image-based abuse from 2020 to 2025. Boys and young men made up 63 per cent of young people seeking help for sextortion, continuing on the trend that emerged in the previous year. The majority of young people contacting Kids Helpline in 2025 were female, living in a major city and under the age of 18. (ABC News: Rhiannon Shine) The report showed most young people contacting Kids Helpline were aged between 10 and 18 (73 per cent), most identified as female (73 per cent), and more contacts were made from those living in Australia's major cities (76 per cent) than in regional and rural areas. The most common time for a young person to reach out for help was late at night, in the early hours of the morning or on weekends (71 per cent) rather than during business hours. It said those times were often when other supports, including trusted adults, were not available and when a person's worries felt hardest to manage alone. The report linked the geographical distance from support services to higher levels of risk for young people. About 29 per cent of those contacting Kids Helpline from outer regional and remote areas reported having suicidal thoughts compared to 21 per cent from major cities. However, ACT, along with Queensland had the highest proportion of contacts requiring an intervention for suicide attempts. For the first time in its history, Kids Helpline had more young people seeking help via webchat than over the phone. (ABC South East SA: Kate Hill) First Nations young people seeking help represented 9 per cent of all contacts, which Kids Helpline said was more than double their proportion of the Australian population. One in three of those who contacted the organisation reported suicidal thoughts, up from one in four in 2020, which it said indicated that suicide continued to have a disproportionate impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people. The service said transgender young Australians were also over-represented in its data, making up 6 per cent of contacts. It said the group reported some of the highest levels of distress, with 26 per cent of transgender and gender diverse young people reporting suicidal thoughts. More males than females contacted Kids Helpline for sextortion and image-based abuse in 2025. (ABC News: Luke Bo

Kids Helpline crisis interventions on the rise again towards COVID high

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