A teenager bullied online takes his own life, leaving family and friends asking the question that can never be fully answered: Why?
A husband goes down a rabbit hole of internet conspiracy theories to the point where he no longer trusts anyone in a uniform.
A man, indoctrinated by online hate groups, carries out a terrorist act which kills multiple people.
These are just some of the more extreme examples of a global mental health epidemic impacting about a billion people.
For many others, the struggle is just getting out of bed, let alone holding down a job, looking after their family or themselves.
In Queensland, about 800 people a year take their own life, while many others attempt it.
Men remain disproportionately affected, accounting for 78.3% of all suspected suicide deaths in 2024 with the rate being 3.7 times higher than that for women.
While Australia has some excellent mental health services, and 24 hour hotlines like Lifeline and Kids Helpline, the grim reality is people can face long waits to get the care they need.
And for someone battling depression, anxiety, eating disorders or suicidal ideation, there are simply not enough GPs, counsellors and psychiatrists to go around, particularly in regional areas.
As someone who has seen first-hand the crippling effects of mental illness in my family, it’s hard for others to fully understand how difficult it is for those affected to access the help they need.
People who have run successful businesses struggle can take all day to get the most basic tasks done.
Often they can spend their whole day on the phone on hold as they try to access government services like Centrelink and public housing.
So what’s the answer?
Tech giant Google believes part of it lies in using AI to help people and their families in their most desperate hour.
It is updating Gemini to bridge the gap between those in need and high-quality information and crisis support.
When a conversation signals acute mental health distress, Gemini will surface a redesigned “Help is available” module to provide streamlined one-click connections to trained crisis services.
It is also spending $30 million globally to help mental health organisations like Lifeline and Kids Helpline scale their capacity, including through AI training.
Given Google just reported strong Q1 2026 results with $109.9 billion in total revenue, a 22% year-over-year increase, it’s a drop in the ocean. But it’s a start.
The company is also providing more safeguards for younger users and those who might be going down a misinformation abyss.
We caught up with Dr Megan Jones Bell who is a medical doctor and the Director of Clinical at Google at the global level.
Before joining Google, Dr. Jones Bell served as Chief Strategy and Science Officer at Headspace, where she played a pivotal role in the company’s evolution from a meditation application into Headspace Health, a comprehensive digital mental health platform.
She also founded Lantern, an early digital health company that pioneered blended mental health interventions integrating software and coaching.
She’s the first to acknowledge that while Gemini is a useful tool for learning and getting information, it is not a substitute for professional clinical care, therapy, or crisis support.
But for some it may be a good first step.
“I’ve seen data that shows it takes on average, 10 years from the onset of a mental health disorder to the time that people get help, and we know half of them actually never get help,’’ Dr Jones Bell tells me in an exclusive interview.
“So it’s an extraordinary public health issue around the world, and it’s certainly in Australia.”
I did some testing of my own on Google Gemini, posting comments indicating I was suffering mental illness to see how it responded.
“I am really sorry to hear you’re going through such a heavy time. Feeling “really depressed” can be incredibly isolating, but please know that you aren’t alone, and there are concrete steps you can take right now to find some footing,’’ Gemini responded before giving me contact numbers and websites for crisis services in the US, Australia and globally.
“Depression often lies to you, telling you that you’re a burden or that no one wants to hear from you. Don’t believe it,’’ it went on.
“Pick one person — a friend, family member, or mentor — and tell them: “I’m going through a really hard time right now and I don’t feel like myself. Can we talk or just hang out?”
“When you’re deeply depressed, a normal “to-do list” feels impossible. Shrink your world down to the next 15–30 minutes.
“Forget about next week; just focus on:
“Hydration: Drink a glass of water.
“Movement: Stand up and stretch, or walk to the mailbox.
“Hygiene: Wash your face or change into clean socks.
“Light: Open a curtain. Sunlight helps regulate your internal clock, which depression often disrupts.
“After I engaged with it more, it went on to provide contact numbers and locations of facilities in my region.
“The goal is for people who are in a moment of crisis, where it’s really hard to think through complex information, we simplify that and wrap that experience in an empathetic language,’’ Dr Jones Bell explained.
She said she and her team were working to ensure people reaching out via Google were getting quality information, based on expert advice.
I asked Dr Jones Bell whether she believed Google, along with other tech giants, had a responsibility to combat misinformation which could lead to adverse outcomes.
She acknowledged it did, saying it was an ongoing challenge to ensure a safe approach with ‘checks at every stage of the model and product development’’.
“As someone who’s worked in technology for a long time, sometimes we only detect those risks as we see and watch how people are actually engaging with our products in the real world.
“As soon as we and we test for that, there are, you know, adversarial red teaming methods that we deploy at scale to try to unearth those issues and solve them before anybody is affected, but some of the protections that we reference in our recent announcement is to address issues like that exactly.’’
“Some of what we have improved in terms of the safety of our products is better identification that the conversation is on a risk trajectory that we need to redirect, we need to ensure that we are not reinforcing urges to self-harm or self-harm behaviour.
“We are not confirming a false belief that somebody may have, which may lead to them being further divorced from reality or we do not want to reinforce isolation.
For young people, Google has already put in place “persona protections” to prevent Gemini from acting like a companion, fostering emotional dependence or avoiding language that simulates intimacy.
“We also have protections for young people that guard against facilitation of bullying or other forms of harassment.
“We have a team, in addition to my team of clinical psychologists and doctors … of developmental psychologists, experts on how kids interact with technology, some of whom sit in Australia”
Dr Jones Bell says she is working at Google because she believes it is the best place to have an impact – using technology and AI – on what is a huge problem globally.
“I am not worried that we will have safe, powerful, effective tools that are accomplishing the right things for people.
“What really worries me as somebody who’s devoted my career to digital mental health, improving preventing mental health disorders … is that we miss the moment.
“(That) we don’t actually harness this most transformative technology to make the state of mental health better on this planet.’’
She said she saw great opportunities – including increasing access and the quality of help, but also helping organisations, like those in Australia, scale what they were doing through AI so they could reach more people.
“We are already working with many governments and health systems around the world to use Gemini in clinically supervised ways that are transforming the access and improving the quality of their population’s health programs … whether with diabetes prevention or cancer care.
“I really do believe you will get there for mental health as well.
“I think it will be something that is helping all of us who are licensed professionals… amplify the impact that we can all have as experts.”
