Dr. Brendan O'Shea:

There are two ways one can view it. The Deputy referred to social media. It clearly represents a significant risk for a variety of reasons on one hand, and on the other hand, adolescents and young adults live, breathe and eat social media. It is part of their existence. We have an obligation to ensure it is regulated, as far as can do so, and our society is responding to that. We also have an obligation to ensure that young people are advised, schooled and safeguarded in how to use social media effectively.

Moving on to our therapies, it is not the social media that is evil; it is the way it is used. Forward-looking services will use apps and will signpost young people to useful websites or Facebook pages. The HSE will use them. We should be using these as part of our therapeutic response and as part of resilience and resource building among this demographic.

Moving to another interesting element, in general practice many members of the ICGP are innovative in their approach. Increasingly we are beginning to use tele-medicine which helps and is relevant in aspects of mental health. Social prescribing is a very interesting area and there are several pilot studies around the country on that involving GPs, including Donegal in conjunction with the HSE, and in Tallaght, where Dr. Darach Ó Ciardha and his team have involved themselves in social prescribing. It is very interesting.