**4. Discussion**

The COVID-19 mental health services dashboards represent an innovative way of reporting high level mental health services data to Australian governments.

Much of the data included in the dashboards had not been reported in this way previously, including data from crisis and support organizations and online mental health information services. The dashboards include a variety of data in one view, over time, at frequent reporting intervals, giving a unique overview and triangulation of data sources that lead to additional insights and confirmation of patterns in service demand and use. Interactions and common movements across different types of service use are readily visible, demonstrating clearly the impacts of the pandemic relative to baseline results, and the influence of lockdowns, other restrictions and outbreaks evident in service use over time. This has enabled the data to form an integral part of the evidence base drawn on by Australian governments to determine adjustments to mental health service provision during the pandemic.

The frequent reporting has supported ongoing, timely reporting improvement both through internal review and frequent feedback from external stakeholders. High frequency reporting has been far more informative than annual reporting could be in the current context.

Ongoing communication with and between data receivers, providers and the analysis team has been crucial when unexpected changes in the data have been observed, so as to avoid spurious conclusions. In some cases, changes in service use have been due to planned service delivery changes rather than pandemic related demand changes.

Maintaining agility and being alert to shifting trends in the data has been an ongoing challenge, particularly given the tight timeframes inherent in weekly and fortnightly reporting. Consideration is being given to the potential benefits of presenting the dashboard material as a restricted release online webpage in future, to allow greater interaction for end users and more flexibility in presentation of content.

As noted above, the present description of the dashboard results is limited to those publicly available at the time of writing. Ongoing updates to the data are published on a quarterly basis in the Mental health services in Australia online publication.

It should be noted that while reporting of aggregate data on mental health service use provides useful insights into the utilization of mental health services, it cannot provide information on either the adequacy of services or the benefits of treatment at the individual level. Neither should it be assumed that the pandemic is the underlying reason for all changes in mental health service use over the reporting period.

There is no 'master' data set for reporting on the use of mental health services in Australia. The data presented in the dashboards are limited to aspects of the mental health system for which adequate data are available or could be readily developed for reporting on a frequent (i.e., at least fortnightly) basis. The AIHW will continue to work to improve available data on the use of mental health services.
