Ms Kate Mitchell:

There are one or two quick wins. We could invest significantly in supports such as counselling in primary care and increase our investment in primary care psychology. However, we need to go a lot further. For example, GPs are trained in mental health, but there has yet to be an evaluation of the impact of that training. We need to look very closely at whether people are provided with the information they require when they see a GP or another primary care professional. Are they being referred to other community and voluntary supports in their local areas? We are looking for primary care professionals to be able to identify where there is a mental health difficulty, assess it and the need for referral to other services such as talking therapies as well as to refer appropriately to mental health specialists. The mental health system works best when there is appropriate integration and collaboration across the sector and the agencies within it. We also need to look at effective collaboration between primary care services and secondary services. For individuals who have been in specialist mental health services and hospitals and come back to the community or continue to avail of community specialist mental health services, it means also getting supports at primary care level. Primary care professionals should be adequately resourced to provide that support.