One of the founding directors of the publicly-funded service, Ian Hickie said suicidal teens are dying while waiting to see a psychologist and called for wait list times to be made public.

Group manager of Headspace centres for the region Peter Rohr said the wait time to see a psychologist in Orange can be up to six weeks, however people in crisis are supported immediately and treated as a priority.

“We’re always aiming to keep wait times to a minimum, and staff work very hard to achieve this. The support of our consortium partners [Lives Live Well and Interrelate] helps do this, as does the support of the broader Orange community," he said.

Mr Rohr said Headspace centres in regional areas face workforce challenges not experience to the same degree in metropolitan centres.

“Finding skilled clinicians can be a challenge, and attracting them to our beautiful community of Orange is often a difficult task,” he said.

Headspace psychologists are often hired on one-year contracts which leaves them exposed to job insecurity and unreliable incomes.

They are usually paid through the Medicare bulk billing system, with the organisation taking between 20 and 30 percent of their $85 fee. If a client fails to show up, as young people are prone to do, the psychologist will not get paid.

Headspace chief executive Jason Trethowan said a number of the organisation's youth mental health centres were struggling to hire and retain clinicians.

Mr Trethowan said it was "deeply distressing" to watch the nation's suicide rate continue to climb, acknowledging that young people waiting to access Headspace services were among the thousands of Australians to take their own lives in recent years.

"People are dying. And they shouldn't be," Mr Trethowan said.

Health Minister Greg Hunt announced a $47 million funding injection for Headspace's head office earlier this month, on top of $51.8 million to boost centres' funding by 8 per cent over four years - increasing the average Headspace centre's base grant to $909,000 a year - announced in October.

Mr Trethowan said it wasn’t enough and the organisation required $35 million to boost its existing centres over the next three years.