Professor Anthony McCarthy:

Student public health nurses are now spending some time with our team as part of their training which is helpful. Many mental health and other issues have been hidden for so long and the effect of the opening up of the services, but also a change in society, is that we are getting more referrals. Our issue is people are hiding things less than before. People are much more open about coming forward. It is not universal, but while the number of births in our hospital decreased from 9,600 three years ago to 8,500 this year, our referrals to the mental health service in the hospital increased from 950 three years ago to 1,340 so far this year.