This is an ABC podcast.

Hi, I'm Sana Khadar and you're listening to All in the Mind here on RN.

Last week, we reported on the shortcomings of Victoria's mental health system,

which has been described by a Royal Commission as a catastrophic failure.

In fact, Victoria spends less per capita on mental health than any other state,

and that's meant more people get turned away from mental health services than actually get help.

If you're a person in Victoria requiring specialist mental health care in the public sector,

you've got a one in three, maybe even a one in four chance of receiving it.

That's Patrick McGorry, Professor of Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne.

He's also the executive director of the Youth Mental Health Organization, Origin.

So in human terms, what does this failure in mental health services

look like? Honorisley can tell you in vivid detail. Most people probably wouldn't know that

there's anything wrong with me and probably there's anything wrong with me. Probably no one would think that maybe I had a mental illness until now.

Honor sat on the expert advisory committee at the Victorian Royal Commission,

and she spoke about her own mental health experiences.

For years, she's documented this journey.

And I've been documenting the process of working through these big feelings,

of figuring out what it's like to feel so hopeless that you want to die.

And now I have years of phone recordings and diary entries from the inside.

I was just having a little like 3 a.m ponder, you know, about how my life is ruined.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Gentle stroll through the forest of doom.

...