Mental Health Support

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:36 pm on 12 February 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:36, 12 February 2019

Well, Llywydd, I'm completely committed to developing our public services with the voice of the user in the centre of the way that we think about those services and try to develop them into the future. There are some groups in the population we have to work harder to make sure that their voices get heard, and the voices of young people who have a mental health condition are certainly in that category. I had the opportunity to meet with a group of young people using mental health services, brought to the Senedd by Helen Mary Jones, when I was the health Minister, and greatly valued that opportunity and the insights that those young people were able to provide to us. And in the field of mental health, that is particularly important, Llywydd, because we know from the most recent figures in England, for example, that there has been a six-fold reported increase amongst children and young people saying that they have a mental health condition over the last two decades. Yet, clinical diagnosed mental health conditions amongst that group of people is up only marginally. So, there is something to learn here from the message that young people are conveying to us when they report themselves having a mental health condition. And meeting those young people face to face is amongst the best ways that we can make sure that we learn those lessons.