The now-21-year-old Victorian says the mental health system is "terrible" and made her wait until she nearly died to get the right help.

After Ms Morris tried to kill herself in 2015, she said she was treated like an attention seeker.

"I just got the feeling (the social worker) didn't think I was serious enough for a bed in a psych ward when I'd had a suicide attempt the night before," she told Victoria's royal commission into the mental health system on Friday.

"I'm not sure how much more serious you can get but I was dismissed."

Ms Morris has been diagnosed with anxiety, depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

As a teenager living in regional Victoria, she said she had to wait until she was sick enough for hospital to get adequate help.

She had gone to youth mental health support service, headspace, but that wasn't enough and subsidies for her psychology sessions were running out.

"I just wasn't getting any better ... and then one day I came home from school and attempted suicide," Ms Morris said.

"I ended up calling the ambulance myself because I saw my dog and thought, 'What are you going to do without me?'"

Ms Morris is demanding better mental health care so other young people don't have to go through what she did.

"My mum's a diabetic and they wouldn't make her wait until until her foot has gangrenous before they did something," she said.

"I've really had to fight very hard to get the help I've just needed to survive."

In a dramatic week of hearings into the state of mental health in Victoria it has also been revealed, Australia could save a whopping $48 billion every year by investing in early intervention to reduce mental illness in children.

A further $11 billion in productivity is lost every year by businesses failing to put measures in place to protect their workers' mental health, much of it in untreated depression.

In its third day of hearings, the Royal Commission into Victoria's mental health system heard from experts and people with lived experience of mental illness about prevention and early intervention.

Beyond Blue chief executive Georgie Harman told the hearing research commissioned by her organisation showed the cost to Australia's economy was huge. But, she said, the human cost was undeniably higher.

"About 60 per cent of the population is well, and we want them to stay well," Ms Harman said.

A further 23 per cent is at risk of developing mental illness, 14 per cent live with mental conditions that have a mild to moderate effect on their lives, and 3 per cent live with severe, complex and ongoing mental illness.

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Ms Harman said enduring stress was a major risk factor in developing a mental health condition, and intervention in early childhood and adolescence was crucial.

"So for example children who experience adversity in childhood ... those experiences are linked to a higher rate of psychological distress later in life," she said.

"So, evidence suggests that people who experience childhood adversity, [in] up to a third of them, that direct experience is linked to depression, anxiety and self-harming behaviours later in life."

But, she said, resilience could be taught and learned. "No one is born with resilience."

The organisation has been buoyed by recent programs that are showing positive results, including an early childhood program called Be You, which has been rolled out to more than 4600 schools nationally, and 1600 early childhood centres.

Another program, NewAccess, had shown a 70 per cent recovery rate for people who participated.

Ms Harman told the commission that mental health policy had been characterised by a haphazard approach between governments and poor long-term planning, exacerbated by times of fiscal constraint and electoral cycles.

"We know what we need to do. It is painstaking but we can do it, I think, if we put aside politics, we put aside short-term funding cycles, we put aside electoral cycles, and we say: 'multiple reviews have told us to do these things'," she said.

"It is about structural change, it is about new models of care; it is about new models of thinking. Let's come together as governments and let's plan at least a decade worth of plans."

The royal commission continues hearings this week.

If you or someone you know needs support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or online at www.lifeline.org.au. The Suicide Call Back Service is available on 1300 659 467. Other resources include Beyond Blue, which can be reached on 1300 22 4636 or online at www.beyondblue.org.au

If life is in danger, call 000.

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