John Priestland

And just a little aside,

those of our community who go this is all unnecessary just rip off the band-aid I can cope they should bear in mind that the research shows that it's the most vulnerable people who are most affected so they might be fine but somebody down their street who's not as fortunate as they are might not be so let's just bear that in mind the second thing we did

Again, a good public health principle, a good public health technique is we carried out a health needs assessment.

And that's looking at who might need support and in what sort of numbers.

And we looked at seven possible risk groups and we identified four that were likely to be at the highest risk.

And those were people with strong associations with the science, technology, and engineering world, STEM people, because their worldview is quite rigid.

And this disclosure challenges that.

People with strong religious beliefs, people who are vulnerable or have existing mental health conditions for the reasons I've just explained.

And then finally, experiences, because the disclosure might trigger a previous experience, or there might be that level of resentment, which is, OK, so you told me there was nothing to this.

You've lied to me for 80 years, that sort of resentment.

So those four groups.

And we came up with calculations on the basis of population and the likelihood of a negative response or a need for a psychological involvement, psychological support.

And we came up with figures.

um for the the number of people who might be affected those weren't intended to be actual precise calculations but it was to show that the number of people affected could run into the millions and therefore that could outstrip the available mental health capacity and it's something that the authorities should take seriously and then what we did in the in the second half of the report

is we came up with a series of measures to try and do those two things, to reduce the impact of disclosure at the time it hits and to help people who might be most affected.

And the fundamental principle behind all of that is to encourage better conversations.

So the three legs of the stool for the support are, first of all, self-help to provide resources that people can use to make them calmer, to make them better able to cope with the uncertainty.

Simple things, everyday things like breathing exercises.

getting off social media, going and doing something you like, getting away from it all, that sort of thing.

So we look after ourselves first and foremost.