GPs have been willing and able, and flexible, in working with our partners in secondary care. We are very aware already of certain groups who are at higher risk of mental health issues, and also groups who are less likely to be provided with good care. There are certain groups that we have been mindful of for many years, for example people with learning disabilities, those with severe mental health issues. As I'm sure you know, many patients in that group die 15 to 20 years earlier than they should do based on physical symptoms, not only their mental health issues. That's for many reasons. Mental health issues may affect their ability to engage with health screening programmes. Many of them smoke. They're on drugs that can make their physical health a lot worse, for example antipsychotics. Often, they don't attend for monitoring, and it's constantly trying to chase people and keep on top of the job.
Likewise, with learning disability groups, there is a lot of hidden physical morbidity, and for both of those groups in particular, we focus additional energy on undertaking physical examinations to detect other morbidities in addition to the mental health problems that are already known to us at an earlier stage, where, hopefully, we can make some impact.
There's also massive inequalities when it comes to people at extremes of age. Scarily, there's a 20 per cent prevalence of mental health problems in young people. Pre-pandemic, they were the stats. I suspect, probably, during the pandemic, and post pandemic, certainly for my patch, we're probably looking at 30 or 40 per cent. That's for many reasons—social isolation, lack of contact with school peers, lack of provision of additional social activities to maintain good mental health. They've all been taken away during the pandemic and are gradually being reintroduced again. But there's a huge need that is currently being unmet.
Likewise, with other extremes of age, for patients in the over-65 groups, there is a relatively high prevalence of dementia and depression, and the pandemic has really exacerbated that. A lot of people rely on their social network, having contact with other people, just a friendly face, someone to say 'Hello', to know that someone cares about you, and have become quite lonely and depressed consequently. Sadly, that's been the case, and continues, to a greater extent, in that vein. And with the pandemic as it is at the moment, I don't think we're entirely sure where it will all lead.
There's also, sadly, due to a crisis with mental health staffing, not enough resources to deal with them in secondary care, which we fully appreciate. The services have been under-resourced, understaffed pre-pandemic, and that's just been exacerbated. A lot of people have left due to ill health personally, and particularly well-being issues and mental health problems in those service providers. And that's not just for secondary care; I think that's also happening in primary care. We're seeing lots of people, for example, retiring earlier than they should do, or would liked to have done or planned to do, because they have been adversely affected by the pressures of COVID and how that has impacted on them personally and professionally, and have actually left the health profession, just adding to the current crisis.
But we try very hard to maintain contact with people and be that first port of call in primary care, and that has remained the case during the pandemic.