Dr. John Farrell:

The pandemic has been very difficult for society. When this started back in March 2020, one of the significant difficulties was referrals. Everything was affected and a lot of people, particularly the elderly population, were very fearful of coming to see their GP. The number of face-to-face consultations reduced dramatically as we were encouraged to practise more online or on the telephone to triage problems that arose. Due to mental health services being underfunded and under-resourced for such a long time, GPs themselves deal with a huge number of mental health issues in general practice on a daily basis. That has become more obvious in the past 12 to 20 months with the pandemic. We manage a lot of it ourselves. We have access to counselling in primary care but as Mr. Quinlan alluded to earlier, sometimes that is not quick enough or readily accessible enough. Unfortunately, people who need counselling have to come up with their own funding to access that through private counsellors. Where those services are not available there have been increased referrals and self-referrals to emergency departments because people have not been able to access the necessary psychiatric care or acute psychiatric assessments. It is an issue. Through our educational webinar series we have tried to support GPs by providing education around mental health issues. That is something we have done from a practical point of view. In the main, GPs have been left on their own but we are used to that. We are the last generalists in dealing with all the different problems that present. Psychiatry and minor and major mental health issues are the bread and butter of general practice.