Underfunding is the real issue in child psychiatry

I WOULD like to respond to the articles by Catherine Shanahan (Irish Examiner, February 2/3) outlining a study of children in care nationally who are prescribed psychiatric medication.

The implicit assumption seemed to be that medication is prescribed for children with psychiatric disorders without proper assessment, and that the prescribing of medications for children with psychiatric disorders, is, in itself, inherently wrong.

Unfortunately, in doing this, a chance was lost to highlight the real scandal in this area, namely that of the gross and chronic underfunding of child psychiatric services. The accepted "best practice" model of provision of child psychiatry services is by a consultant-led multi-disciplinary team. In Ireland there is one child and adolescent psychiatrist to 18,200 children. As a comparison, in Finland there is one to 6,000 children.