Professor Deirdre Heenan:

I have been involved to date in the mental health strategy and working in the area of mental health. I do know if the Senator is aware of this but it is a great disappointment to us that after the voluntary community sector and statutory sector worked together to produce a very good mental health strategy, our Minister announced last Friday, ironically on World Mental Day, that 80% of that strategy is to be shelved as the funding is not there to deliver it. That really begs the question from a policy perspective as to what on earth the point is in getting groups together, talking about principles of coproduction and producing a strategy. Very unusually, in this case the Department of Health in the North produced a funding strategy to go alongside that mental health strategy. Many groups on the ground are devastated by this news and the fact that it is simply not going to happen. We do not know where the decision was made. However, my contention would be that politics is about priorities and clearly mental health is not a priority.

Within that we had hoped to see the development of perinatal mental health services. That was to be a priority. We are the only region of the UK without a specialist unit. We had hoped that money would be found but it has not been found. Women in the North are still going to mixed mental health services for perinatal services. It is simply not good enough. We have also been promised a women’s mental health strategy. There is no sign of it. There is no discussion on it. Women have done their very best to push women’s health issues, but again it gets lost in the noise regarding the lack of money and not being able to afford to do this. For that area, it is very difficult to say who are the advocates pushing for a women’s health strategy and how we can ensure that we get more traction in this area. People are being left behind.