MEP warns of impending post-Covid mental health crisis

Maria Walsh wants dedicated mental health staff to be appointed to hospitals to support frontline workers who have worked in traumatic conditions throughout the pandemic

Fine Gael MEP Maria Walsh has called for specific mental health supports for healthcare workers. Picture: Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie

Dedicated counsellors must be appointed to hospitals for staff amid warnings that we are facing a post-Covid mental health crisis.

MEP Maria Walsh has warned that "our next pandemic is our mental health one" and significant supports will be required for burned-out frontline workers.

She warned that similar to an economic recession, it is now likely that there will be a dramatic increase in the number of people accessing mental health services in the next one to five years.

"We have younger people who are not developing, and further developing, their character and personality, and life experience," she said.

Ms Walsh added that as the country reopens, many people will have a difficulty in that transition and there will be an increase in social anxiety.

"As the economy opens back up and people are encouraged to go back to the workplace anybody who needs a mental health day should get one, that has to be a part of the policy for sick pay, mental health is separate to the overall structure," she said.

Turning to frontline workers, especially those who have been working in our hospitals over the past 14 months, Ms Walsh said new measures must be rolled out to ensure staff can continue to work.

I think counsellors, talk therapists, and medical experts need to be on hand and we need to appreciate that we've just come through a crisis.

"Taking the US example, if there was a trauma that impacted a certain hospital they would have trauma experts in and that's certainly a blueprint that we should be looking at adopting and making sure that in the one- to three-year timeframe after this pandemic has finished, that we don't have further pressure on our healthcare system, particularly our workers who literally have just kept the country afloat," she said.

The Fine Gael MEP and former Rose of Tralee said frontline staff across all sectors had been under pressure and stress prior to the pandemic and she is among the MEPs who are now calling for a year of mental health across Europe after Covid-19.

"That would allow us to put pressure on ministers for finance, like Paschal Donohoe, to make sure every time they're signing a cheque for something that there's a ringfence for mental health," said Ms Walsh who herself continues to suffer from long-Covid.