Financial stressors were often worse, isolation issues were more acute and family break-down risks were more significant, Judge Cain said in calling for a greater focus on quality and accessible mental health resources in the state's rural and regional areas.

Judge Cain's call was backed-up by Australia's leading mental health expert Patrick McGorry who said nationally mental health systems were predominantly a "patchwork" and hard to navigate, even more so from regional areas.

Telehealth's prominence has risen across most health fields but Professor McGorry said, while helpful, telehealth was no replacement for face-to-face contact in mental health.

"Mindfulness and well-being apps are great for normal people but for people with mental ill health digital is also a vital sophisticated part of integrated care," Professor McGorry said. "(Telehealth is) absolutely part of modern mental health system which will really help with absorbing demand but it's not a replacement for it. In fact when we survey young people, the majority still want human contact and face-to-face as well as the digital."

Professor McGorry said while telehealth might help close some mental health gaps in regional Victoria, systems did not have the capacity to properly meet demand in metropolitan areas, let alone regional.

The social and emotional toll of a pandemic was the focus for a Melbourne Press Club forum with Professor McGorry and Judge Cain on Wednesday afternoon.

Judge Cain, who led the introduction of Victorian real-time suicide and self-harm reporting this year, said mental health risks tended to run double in regional areas to metropolitan and were exacerbated by a lack of support resources.

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"So it is a significant problem," Judge Cain said. "The other difficulty is, particularly in smaller regional towns, the services are even harder to access because it involves travel or it involves interactions with others to go and seek help.

"Often the services available are only a GP (general practitioner) or public hospital. I'm not suggesting either of those are bad or inappropriate, they do a great job, but they often involve a referral to some other service which again takes time and isn't managed in the timely way that is necessary to deliver the service that's needed.

"I think there would need to be real focus in providing good quality resources in regional areas so services are accessible."

Professor McGorry, who is a professor of youth mental health at University of Melbourne, said the lack of options put a great strain on primary care providers and hospital emergency departments, the latter more equipped for urgent episodes rather than long-term support. He called this "the missing middle".

"The people who are too complex or have more persistent problems than a GP or maybe a private psychologist (are) sufficient," Professor McGorry said.

"Headspace is a primary care service. There are a whole bunch of young people and adults...too complex for basic primary care system and the only option for them ends up being the EDs in hospitals. There's a huge gap in the middle for what needs to be built."

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