Psychiatric crisis - Youth being held hostage by red tape

Something needs to be done about the youthful and adolescent psychiatric problems that are besetting this country. We have one of the highest suicide rates in the world among young people.

This suicide rate grew in the best of economic times, but Dr John Connolly, secretary of the Irish Association of Suicidology, warns that suicides inevitably increase in times of recession. If the Government had implemented its plans in this area there would be about five times as many beds around the country for underage people in need of psychiatric care.

In 2007 there were 3,600 children on waiting lists and one-third of them had been there for more than a year. During that year 364 underage patients had to be admitted to adult psychiatric facilities, because there was no appropriate facility for them.