I am very passionate about my work. I firmly believe that psychology has so much more to offer than merely assessing need and designing appropriate interventions for people in difficulty. That is crucial work. We will always have to help those that fall down and we need to continue to do this work with the highest level of competency and compassion. However, the reality is that we live in very challenging times. We will never have enough mental health professionals to help those in need. Indeed due to stigma many will not seek the help that they could do with. In the current climate of doom and gloom more and more frightened people are presenting to GPs. Many of them are being inappropriately referred to psychiatric services. We need to be more innovative. Many people can be taught how to handle crisis – how to ‘mind’ themselves through a challenging period in their lives. There are many wonderful resources which can be tapped into within our communities.

I think that mental health professionals have to seriously look at the whole area of education. Already research shows that by teaching children of 10 years of age the skills of rational thinking the rate of depression in adolescence declines by up to 50%. Psychology has parked itself solely within the domain of deficits, disorders and disadvantage. It has a very real role to play in preventing mental illness and in educating people how to cope with symptoms and work at alleviating them.

I was working with community psychiatric nurses in Letterkenny yesterday. I was delighted to be be invited to address a group of people who are at the cold-face of what is happening in our communities. It was brilliant to see a team of professionals willing to open their their minds to very new research from the Positive Psychology movement. not all of the material fits the client base. However the general view was that this new research is very interesting and will have a role to play somewhere. Potentially it could take some of the pressures from an under-resourced, under-funded and exceptional busy psychiatric service!!