Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 19 June 2018.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 1:48, 19 June 2018

I'm not sure that first aid is the way to deal with it. That suggests something that is acute, something that's just arisen. I think it's more long term than that. I take the point that the leader of UKIP is making in terms of how we deal with people who don't exhibit any external signs of depression. I've seen it at close hand, I've got a fair idea of how it operates in people, but it's not always obvious to those who are not familiar with the individual involved, and that is difficult, of course, because the external signs are not there. If you break a leg, it's obvious: the signs are there. That's why I want to make sure that when we look at mental health, we don't just look at it as a service designed to help people when they get into crisis, that we do look at ways in which we can help young people particularly—that's important, we have a counsellor in each secondary school in Wales—but at what more could be done, for example, to look to help people who are not obviously in need of help. They are the people, quite often, of course, that the system needs to identify. How that's done, of course, we will take forward with practitioners, to see how we can create a service where there is more focus on prevention and less on dealing with symptoms when they become obvious.