John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes, I am in my office. I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I practised as a psychotherapist and I have a particular interest in mental health. I was taken aback by some of the content of the presentations. I thank ALONE, Sage Advocacy and the Mental Health Commission for forwarding papers to the sub-committee. Any Oireachtas Members or members of the public listening in will be particularly taken by the discussion on the huge impact of the Covid period on people's mental health. As public representatives, we certainly are aware of that, including by way of the weekly stories we hear about the impact on older people in particular and how deeply and quickly embedded the behaviours that were associated with the Covid crisis have become in their life patterns.

Reference was made to loneliness, how people did not receive visitors for a long period and how frightening the whole Covid experience was for many. As a society, generally speaking, we seem just to have moved on from that. I referred once or twice in the health committee during the Covid period to a great book called Stacking the Coffins, which is not a very positive title. It is about the Spanish flu pandemic and its impact in Ireland. One of the author's findings was that the failure to commemorate or mark what happened in a significant way meant the impact of the Spanish flu crisis was lost from the Irish consciousness and psyche. As a result and unlike in other countries, when the Covid pandemic hit, we were unprepared for its impact because it had gone out of the collective memory of Irish people that there had been a pandemic here just a century ago. Very few of us knew of the impact of the Spanish flu pandemic in Ireland. I certainly did not. The book - the author's full name escapes me, but her first name is Ida - was one of the first to be written about the Spanish flu experience in Ireland, which made it quite important.

In discussing the life-cycle approach to mental health, I am reminded of a phrase my late father used when he was in his last period of life and which I had not heard before then. It was "once a man, twice a boy". It is important to note that some people live the most extraordinary and rich lives right until the end in which they remain very active and surrounded by other people. I would like to think they are in the majority. A dear friend of mine who is aged in their late 80s is one of the most extraordinarily active individuals I have ever met. This person is independently active, has created a full life and keeps a dynamic going. However, as was mentioned, even before the Covid crisis, levels of loneliness, mental stress and challenges around mental health existed for older people.

Mr. Moynihan of ALONE said: "We do not give older age due consideration as a time where mental health difficulties may emerge for the first time." That is particularly interesting. Having practised as a psychotherapist, and as I know from my own life, when people experience a mental health challenge for the fist time, which could be around something like a bereavement, it kind of arms them, if they deal with it successfully and with assistance, for further mental health challenges that may arise over the course of their lives.

The idea that a mental health challenge may occur for the first time in someone's senior years is particularly challenging and interesting. Maybe ALONE could say a little more about that.

Mr. Moynihan mentioned the action plan to combat loneliness. What is the status of that and how are mental health services for older people linked, for example, to the implementation of the national positive ageing strategy?