Concerns raised over child mental health

FIFTEEN percent of a sample group of children aged 11-13 in middle-class schools around Dublin fulfilled the criteria for a current mental disorder, a conference will hear today.

Experts from psychiatry, psychology, social work, nursing and health research are meeting to discuss youth mental health and the influencing role it has on a young person’s future.

Speaking about her research, which examined rates of psychiatric illness among Irish adolescents, Professor Mary Cannon, a Health Research Board clinician scientist and consultant psychiatrist at Beaumont Hospital, said the research was conducted with 1,131 primary-school students in north and west Dublin and Kildare.