Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 27 June 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Future of Mental Health Care

Early Intervention and Talk Therapy: Discussion

1:30 pm

Photo of Pat BuckleyPat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Many of my questions have been asked. I will make some observations. Most of the witnesses mentioned early intervention. Dr. Barry spoke about emotional issues and issues with smartphones. It is a poignant point that everything one buys in the world comes with instructions, but the Internet did not. It is something that should be flagged. I like Dr. Barry's analysis that there is a real world and a virtual world. I see it in my role as mental health spokesperson and also as a volunteer for the past 14 years with an organisation which has been providing free counselling for people. In the past two years anxiety has skyrocketed in the schools.

Turning to the schools and all the representative organisations here, again it goes back to early intervention. I recently wrote to all the secondary schools in east Cork. I did an anonymous questionnaire. I asked them about early intervention. I asked the principals of these schools if they would favour having all their staff trained up to the minimum level of SafeTalk or the extra little bit to the level of the assist course. About 99.9% of them came back positive. That tiny percentage was that they did not believe it would ever happen because of funding. The second question asked for their opinion on being trained up and everyone came back and said it would not happen because of funding. There is a big break-up there.

We are a reactive society when we should be proactive as one. I address this comment to all the witnesses. Early intervention has to be the key. The only way to foster early intervention is by starting them when they are very young and give them the coping skills. That goes across social media and everything.

A number of years ago I did night classes in UCC on non-formal guidance. After two years, the final line I heard was, "There is no such thing as depression..." and my ears really pricked up to hear the line after that. It was, "There is no such thing as depression; it is the inability to cope with life's measures." I ask for the witnesses' opinion on that because I think this is where we are at the moment. The generation coming up do not have the skills to cope with life's measures such as the death of a family member, a tragic accident, or being cyberbullied or sexually harassed. It goes across a broad spectrum. Should we not be going back to the bread and butter and possibly even in late primary school alerting them of the real hard knocks in life and say, "This is what's going to happen but this is what you do to help it."?

We have dealt with recruitment and retention, but the major issue is access. We have all heard of all these great services. When the crap hits the fan and people ask where they can go they are told they cannot go to a particular place because it is full, only open from Monday to Friday. There is no such thing as 24-7. While 7-7 is supposed to be on the way, it is not there yet. It is going to be great, but people cannot access it. It is a huge problem. Everybody knows if they want a sliced pan or a bottle of milk they will go to the supermarket or the local shop. If people want to watch a soccer match, they go to a soccer match because it will be on that pitch. The only thing that seems to be recurring here is an overreliance on the emergency services, GPs, the Garda and the fire service. God forbid, as the last resort probably one of the hardest things to do is go back and tell one's parents in the belief that a problem shared is a problem halved, but when it comes to mental health issues a problem shared is a problem doubled because the parents do not have the skills and so they are reactive. When they react they explode and it puts the onus back on the person in stress and is defeatist.

That issue of the coping skills, the inability to cope with life's measures, do we have to go back to a more cognitive realistic way and start at the very basics. We need to start with the five-year old, or the nine or ten-year old who is hitting puberty and tell them the truth. We need to target teenagers and tell them the truth. There is a huge issue with smartphones. Technology is fabulous, but the art of conversation has broken down and that has to be addressed. We have to be realistic about it. I will leave it at that. I would be very curious to hear the witnesses' reaction to what I have said about coping skills and life's measures.

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