Dr. Brendan Doody:

Planning for mental health is everybody's responsibility. I speak from the perspective of the specialist mental health services. Work needs to be done in education for parents and teachers to inform them so they are more aware of the mental health issues young people will experience because of what we have gone through.

For specialist mental health services, it is about how we ramp up capacity to see the increased numbers of young people who will be referred. That means looking within buildings and facilities, how we will ramp up capacity, particularly with face-to-face consultations, and how to do that taking into account public health considerations and restrictions because of Covid. Then there is examining programmes and how we might facilitate the use of technology. There has been quite a leap forward in the usefulness and use of technology. In future, we will see a balance between face to face and online and the use of technology to support young people who are referred to specialist mental health services.