Dr. Michelle Kelly:

I might respond to the Deputy's point about loneliness and depression. I work with the dementia community, predominantly. There is an increase in early diagnosis for dementia, which is excellent, but we also see very high rates of what we call behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia, like loneliness, depression and anxiety. We tend to see polypharmacy used if an individual is expressing these types of symptoms. With behaviour analysis or behavioural support, we will assess the individual's environment and we will look at rehabilitative actions. We will seek to identify the goals and values that that individual wants to work on. Usually, we can work with the individual directly around identifying them, and then we implement those sorts of behavioural support plans to help that individual. I work a lot in dementia advocacy. If, for example, the person identifies that he or she is lonely, then we need to understand what that means for that individual. Loneliness does not just necessarily mean that you do not have a family member. You can feel lonely surrounded by people. We identify the goals for the individual, but they really need to be actionable steps. We try to identify if the individual is willing to go to a local advocacy group or a local community support. Around awareness raising, we are very lucky that we have the support of the Psychological Society of Ireland in running our annual conference. The conference that we mentioned was our 16th annual conference.