Government ignoring 'escalating demand' for children's mental health services

Delays in finding a child psychiatrist for South Kerry, where services were recently the subject of a critical report, are a “ huge issue”, but it is not the only region where families cannot get help. File photo

The Government is ignoring “escalating demand” for children’s mental health services with recruitment urgently needed, the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland has said.

Delays in finding a child psychiatrist for South Kerry, where services were recently the subject of a critical report, are a “ huge issue”, but it is not the only region where families cannot get help, said Dr Maeve Doyle, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and a director of the College of Psychiatrists.

“The Government appears to be ignoring the fact that demand for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services is escalating,” she said.  

“The emergence of Covid-19 brought a number of issues, including social isolation, more homeschooling and no access to sports. This has led to a massive increase in mental illness in our children and adolescents.”

The role in South Kerry has been vacant since 2016.  “This is not about city versus rural locations, but more about the way that the HSE needs to do far more to retain doctors in general,” she said.

“Additionally, if an appropriate amount of money had been invested by the HSE in planning and ensuring a proper service with proper governance then not only would a huge amount of distress have been avoided for the families concerned but we likely would have saved money overall given the probable compensation figures to come.”

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She said there is a “lack of respect” for psychiatrists, and also blamed inadequate resources, and lack of secretarial support as some of the reasons that more than 100 of the 485 psychiatrist roles are unfilled or filled by a non-specialist. 

“The 2006 Vision for Change report recommended 11 clinical staff for a catchment area of 50,000 people. Many rural areas have less than 50% of this staffing level,” she said. That report also said that 99 multi-disciplinary teams were needed but there are just 73 now. 

“The recruitment process is managed centrally and panels are formed. Jobs are offered to candidates in order of merit who may have no interest in working in that location, the panel then lapses and the whole process of interviewing to create another panel starts again,” she explained.

CAMHS teams are based in the community and there have been calls to link these with hospitals as one solution.

“This is a good idea in theory,” she said. “But for this to work, governance and reporting relationships of separate systems, i.e. hospital vs community, would need considerable work and adequate resourcing.”