Services needed to break young user cycle

TEENAGERS are dying and families are being torn apart due to a lack of services for adolescent drug addicts, campaigners have claimed.

A shortage of detox facilities for teenagers, a lack of mental health beds, no proper aftercare for teen drug users when they come out of treatment along with limited accommodation facilities for recovering addicts are combining to create a crisis within Ireland’s adolescent population.

While services for teenage addicts improved in recent years, much of a 2005 government-sponsored report on the problem remains to be implemented.

Professionals have identified the lack of residential detox facilities, specifically earmarked for adolescents, as a key weakness in the State’s battle against drug addiction.

Two of the country’s main drug treatment centres, Beaumount Hospital and Cuan Dara in Dublin, have no designated detox programmes or beds for under-18s. In Cork, the Matt Talbot Adolescent Services centre said in-patient, medically managed, detoxification was particularly needed for young people.

According to the Matt Talbot centre, 98% of “ambulatory [walk-in] detoxification” cases have been unsuccessful.

Children as young as 10 years of age are presenting themselves at treatment centres for help with alcohol or drug problems. The average age of adolescents seeking help is falling. Currently, it’s 14-years-of-age, according to recent HSE reports.

“We’re calling on the Government to give us the resources, as indicated in the national policy on drugs,” said Geraldine Ring, clinical director at the Matt Talbot centre. “They have identified that, working with serious substance abuse and misuse, you have to have detox and mental health facilities and aftercare. They are the gaps in the service.”

Under-18s, it emerged, have become “polydrug users”, according to experts, dabbling in whatever is available. Lately, this has included benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety drugs, also known as “smarties”), cocaine, cannabis, ecstasy and heroin.

According to social campaigner Fr Peter McVerry, who operates a homeless shelter for boys in Dublin and is a member of the working group who drew up the 2005 report, issues surrounding parental consent remain an obstacle to the treatment of under-18s.

“This is a big thing we have come across because, in some cases, parents just aren’t interested. We’ve had cases where the parents have to sign a consent form for a drug treatment centre and the parent has just not come in to do it. In some cases, they just say, ‘feck off, I’m not interested anymore’. There are other instances where the young person doesn’t want the parents to know and, when they’re told they have to get parental consent for treatment, they just walk away.”

With the age profile of drug users getting younger and the amount of people needing treatment increasing, there have been calls for more government resources to deal with the problem.

“The under-18s have been shelved, nationally, for years,” says Ms Ring.

“Nobody is addressing it at a serious level. Now, cocaine is after exploding, but we knew about the problems 20 years ago.”