Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 January 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children

Wellness, Well-being and Mental Health: Discussion

9:30 am

Photo of Jillian van TurnhoutJillian van Turnhout (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. It is great we have a focus on this important issue today. I do not disagree with anything the witnesses said. I applaud the work being done by Youth Work volunteers and youth organisations. Every week, approximately 40,000 volunteers in Ireland work with young people. I would love this same style of work being brought into the SPHE programme in schools, because the research done by children themselves through Dáil na nÓg and other reports shows that the last teacher into the school does SPHE and it is not valued as a subject. We need to see its importance in shaping the lives of young people.

There is interconnection between many of the children's rights issues I deal with and mental health, and separating them out does not help us. I am not discussing the causes, but there is interconnection with regard to families in crisis, homelessness and violence against women and children, and it adds to the distress. There are also individual issues, such as the recognition of transgender children. Very often they end up in mental health services because we have not found a way to deal with these issues. I very much applaud and thank the witnesses for raising the issue of the interconnectedness with alcohol. We do not talk about this as an issue and how risky decisions can be made. All too often, our services are separated, so we have addiction services to deal with alcohol and other services to deal with mental health, but we do not have dual diagnosis which is what we need to seek. I read Mr. Breslin's blog post about young Caoilte, and it is an indictment on us all. We need to examine issues such as dual diagnosis to ensure services are there. The issue of mental health and the role played by the addiction of young people or of their parents or family members was also pointed out in the report on children who died in the care of the State. I very much agree with the witnesses on this.

I am very conscious that by the age of 13 one in three children will have had mental health difficulties. How this is dealt with will define for life how the person deals with it. I have spoken before about how in my late teens I had a mental health difficulty, but I was lucky because my parents had pester power and got me the counselling and support I needed. I have the resilience built in and, touch wood, I am able to deal with various pressures as they arise. It brings home to me the issue of access to services. I have argued that the child and adolescent mental health services should be part of the Child and Family Agency, Tusla, because it should be a wraparound service for children and the supports they have.

There is a quote from Gandhi about being the change you wish to see. Recently, I read about how it came about that Gandhi said this. Apparently a mother went to one of his meetings and queued to ask Gandhi to speak to her son who was eating too much sugar. He asked her to return to him two weeks later. Although she wondered why he could not deal with it then she respected him and did return two weeks later. She queued again and Gandhi spoke to her son. She asked him why he could not have done it two weeks previously and he said it was because he had to give up sugar first before he could ask her son to do so. I applaud Mr. Breslin and Dr. D'Alton for what they are doing and for practising what they preach. All of us need to take on this challenge.

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