Denise Welch accuses the media of 'fear-mongering' during coronavirus crisis
Denise Welch told Eamonn and Ruth that she's "shocked and appalled" by the way in which the government and media have represented coronavirus to people.
"I have taken a lot of criticism for this but I’ve never felt so passionate about anything in my life," she said as she explained why she believes we should look to scientific data for an accurate representation of where we are in the fight against the virus.
Denise called for a change in the way news about the virus is reported, arguing that it created an environment of anxiety and fear - particularly for those living with mental health issues.
"Everything that I do is trying to find a parity between how we deal with physical illness and how we deal with mental illness on the same level," she said. "I will do anything to help balance the fear-mongering."
Dr Sara was on hand to offer her expert opinion about the impact the pandemic has had on mental health and explained that she had seen it first-hand in her clinics.
However, she stressed that it's so important that we continue to take advice and guidelines seriously.
"I think for me it’s really important that we look at the death rates, we look at the number of hospitalisations and the number of people on ventilators and those are on the decrease despite the spikes in number of cases, which usually indicates that we are managing to actually track and trace and isolate as well as we’d like," she said.
"But I do also think that there is so much to this virus we don’t know still. We don’t know how our immune system is going to work in terms of our antibodies, whether we will be immune to it, for how long we’re going to be immune to it."
"We don’t know how it is going to affect us come the winter. And when the flu season and other winter versus come around, so I do think we still need to be cautious. We do still need to practice social distancing, wearing masks and washing hands."