Learning Points: Light at the end of the tunnel for mental health?

THE number of children with mental health issues presenting to the paediatric emergency department in Temple Street has increased dramatically, according to a study by Dr Eoin Fitzgerald. Such incidences rose from 69, in 2006, to 432, in 2016.

This confirms what all of us working in the mental health profession having been experiencing for many years. There is an epidemic of mental health issues among children and teenagers. We can no longer ignore it.

The push for mental wellbeing in schools has done very little to ameliorate the situation and may have had an adverse affect on our children.

I know that’s a controversial thing to say, but the Government, in its bid to increase awareness, might have actually promoted and endorsed mental health issues among our children and teenagers. I have been talking about this for many years.

I hope I am wrong. But the statistics are frightening, and continuing to grow.

And we have to ask ourselves the difficult questions: what is causing this dramatic rise in mental health conditions and what can we do to bring about change?

The Government rolled out its wellbeing initiative two years ago, with little thought of who would deliver such important content, or what that content should be.

The burden of this programme was placed on new or younger teachers, who felt that they were not in a position to say ‘no’. Unfortunately, which is often the case in the civil service, the most suitable person isn’t always the one who delivers the content.

So, what you would see around the corridors of schools was literature on self-harm, depression, and anxiety, punctuated by the platitude, ‘it’s okay not to be okay’.

But what was all of this doing in the fight against adolescent mental health? I fear it was promoting it. It was giving the message that if you don’t have a mental health issue, you’re just normal, and if you know anything about teenagers, being normal, or not being unique, is about as appealing as an ingrown toenail. So what must we do now, given the findings of this significant report?

Well, Dr Fitzgerald should be commended for carrying out the study. He should be the one the new government asks to look at what is required for teenagers who are struggling with mental health issues. It is clear from his report that the emergency unit is not the place to treat them.

“You’re in a very loud, overcrowded environment and, in the midst of someone telling you how vulnerable they’re feeling, you,unfortunately, have to rush to an emergency and leave them,” he writes.

This type of dystopian picture illuminates how far we have yet to come in our treatment of children’s mental health in this country. I’m not trying to place all the blame on the Government. When I was training as a family psychotherapist, I undertook my internship with a government-sponsored clinic in Inchicore, in Dublin. It was run by Dr Padraic Gibson. It is a wonderful, free service for families in that community.

So I know the Government takes mental health seriously, but they lost an opportunity to roll out effective initiatives in schools to help children and teenagers who are labouring under mental health issues. And it also comes down to simple economics: we don’t have the money to pay for resources to meet the needs of our children. Dr Fitzgerald summed up the problem: “There has been a five- to six-fold increase — 526% — in presentations to the department, but there certainly hasn’t been a five- to six-fold increase in the number of resources available, either in hospitals or in the community.”

Why has there been such an increase in presentations? We need to analyse Dr Fitzgerald’s data anddevelop a plan, so that we can meet the needs of our children.

Child and adolescent mental health has always been a contentious topic in this country. Anyone working in the field knows that there has been a significant increase in the amount of adolescents seeking out services. Surely, vulnerable children sitting in the chaos of emergency rooms is something we should be eradicating.

We need to invest in our children, so that when they present with a serious mental health issue, they will finally see that we take it seriously in this country and are able to provide them with the space they need.