Dr. Joseph Duffy:

We know most mental health difficulties that span across the lifetime occur by the age of 17. The entry path to adulthood is the key developmentally. If mental health difficulties are going to occur and be lifelong, they will most likely occur at this time. That is why we do the work in Jigsaw on supporting young people between 12 and 25. We know that piece of it. We also know that, before Covid, there was a significant difficulty regarding the needs. In this regard I am referring to reduced stigma and better awareness, including better awareness among parents, in schools and in the wider environment. Better awareness is helping people to seek help, but part of the difficulty concerns who is available to support people once they say it is okay not to be okay and that they are reaching out for help. Recognising that we focused on psychology this morning, we need to note there is a significant need. That has been identified in surveys, not just in my work but also in other work. We can see that when we introduce new initiatives, such as those online, the uptake is significant. However, we end up competing against each other, with each of us looking for the same mental health professional. In Jigsaw we operate a transdisciplinary model, which means we can have social workers, mental health staff, occupational therapists and psychologists all coming with some form of psychotherapeutic training. That is really needed. What we want to do is ascertain how we can support that with an early-intervention model. What is lacking, however, is a focus on connectivity overall and the journey regarding primary care, secondary care and third level. Some need support at primary care level when young, and then they enter CAMHS and services at third level. They should be supported to work through a recovery model, enabling us to go along. The difficulty is that there are no supports even for us to have conversations about coming together to think about this and how to plan for some factors in the longer term.