Mental health issues in the island could be reaching ’epidemic’ levels, a senior politician has warned.

Speaker of the House of Keys Juan Watterson raised the issue in Tynwald this week and a health department member agreed it was a major problem.

One in three people is affected.

Mr Watterson asked Department of Health and Social Care member Ann Corlett (Douglas Central) - who was standing in for Health Minister Kate Beecroft, who was ill - whether, in light of increased referrals to mental health services, ’mental health issues are starting to become an epidemic in this island’.

He also wanted to know what else could be done to ’remove the stigma and improve the resilience of the population as a whole’.

Mrs Corlett said she agreed ’totally’ with his concerns.

She added: ’All government departments must work together if we are going to make a difference. Education, lifelong learning, sport and exercise, housing, employment, crime, courts - I could go on.

’Mental health concerns us all, but it does not stop with government. Working with the private sector and the third sector is imperative, if we are to break the silence that surrounds mental health.’

Earlier, Mrs Corlett had outlined how a five-year strategic plan for mental health and wellbeing had been drawn up in 2015.

It advocated an ’holistic approach’ to mental health and called for collective responsibility.

’The mental health service and public health directorate collaborated on assessing the levels of mental ill health and wellbeing in the local population, notably in the development of the mental health and wellbeing questions in the Health and Lifestyle Survey, published in October 2017.’

She also pointed to other initiatives, including the Manx e-clinic, which gave ’rapid access to low intensity mental health interventions’, a strategy to combat self-harm and a strategic review of mental health.

Chief Minister Howard Quayle, a former health minister, pointed out the new facility Manannan Court, which opened this year, provided extra capacity to ’enable us to treat more people on the Isle of Man’.

That and the creation of an ’early intervention wraparound family team to help those families experiencing their children with mental health issues, instead of having to send them off the island’ constituted major advances in the provision for people with mental health issues.

But, he added: ’We should always look to improve the service on mental health that impacts one in three of the population.’