Mental health - Shock study highlights funding gap

IT IS alarming to learn that one-in-five teenagers in Ireland experience mental health problems and that children under the age of 11 have been clinically diagnosed as hooked on alcohol.

It is also disturbing to note that 16% of teenagers who suffer mental disorders have seriously considered committing suicide.

Remarkably, these revelations do not emanate from urban black-spots in a major city. On the contrary, they reflect the problems confronting young people in one town in rural Ireland.