Dr. Joseph Duffy:

I am grateful to the Chair and committee members for this opportunity to contribute to, and support, the committee's important work. By way of brief introduction, Jigsaw is Ireland's primary youth mental health charity. Supported by the HSE and other funders, Jigsaw has, over the past 16 years, established a track record in achieving better mental health outcomes for young people by providing a range of primary care therapeutic services for those aged 12 to 25 as well as creating supportive communities around them.

With more than 240,000 students enrolled across the higher education system, our third level institutions are home to a large cohort of Ireland's youth population. Indeed, when we add those in further education, this number rises to almost 400,000. As an organisation focused on supporting the mental health of young people in settings where they live, learn, work and play, higher and further education represents an area of great interest for Jigsaw. At Jigsaw, we recognise that college years represent a key transitional life stage for young people, offering opportunity, challenge, experimentation, unpredictability, instability and more. Internationally, evidence points to increasing severity and complexity of mental health difficulties among third level students. Emerging international research also indicates that the Covid-19 pandemic, and its associated consequences have had a disproportionately negative effect on the mental health of third level students. At Jigsaw, we have experienced this at first hand, where more and more young people aged 18 to 25 are seeking the services of Jigsaw throughout the country and online, but long before Covid, the indicators were not positive.

Jigsaw's My World Survey highlighted the proportion of young adults reporting severe anxiety as having increased from 15% to 26% and those reporting severe depression as having increased from 14% to 21%. This is over the course of a decade. These, I am sure members will agree, are alarming figures. What is clear is the current landscape of mental health and well-being supports for students across higher education institutions, HEIs, nationally is fragmented and inconsistent in nature. We know that not all HEIs have fully documented guidance on key areas such as mental health policy or protocols for responding to students in distress. Where such guidance does exist, it is not always clear how it is implemented in practice or embedded in campus life. Far too often, HEIs rely on the efforts of individual staff members or student bodies rather than adopting a coherent, campus-wide approach. At Jigsaw, we believe it is imperative a whole-of-campus, collaborative approach is needed, part of which will include the active participation of students and the move towards embedding well-being within the curricula. This must be a core component of the educational journey of all students. Indeed, this whole-system approach to student mental health and well-being is recommended in the national student mental health and suicide prevention framework of 2020 and again in the higher education healthy campus charter and framework of 2022. Jigsaw has first-hand experience of successfully contributing to such an approach within the post-primary sector. Our One Good School initiative is currently supporting more than 150 post-primary schools in their implementation of a whole-school approach to mental health and well-being, supporting students, educators, school leaders and parents.

To inform this statement, we consulted our youth advocates - a large cohort of youth volunteers who support our work across a range of areas. What was clear is that, on the ground, many students feel unsupported. Key takeaways from our talks with young people include their sense of a widespread lack of awareness of where to go for help and, if support is identified, the need to jump through hoops to cross the threshold. Our youth advocates pushed for the need to create a more sustained focus on mental health and well-being as part of the student experience for all and to move away from once-off initiatives, such as well-being weeks. They called for a fresh approach, one that includes and involves all facets of the college community and that is collaborative, innovative and open.

At Jigsaw, we fully acknowledge the complexities of addressing mental health and well-being in HEIs, but we believe promoting student mental health and well-being requires much more than a functioning student counselling service. We need to work collaboratively to address the current fragmented and inconsistent nature of mental health and well-being support available to students to avoid duplication and ensure equitable access to an integrated mental health support system that best meets the needs of all students. Given the diversification of the student profile in recent years, it is crucial to ensure a range of targeted mental health supports and services are also provided to meet effectively the needs of students who may be considered more at risk. The valuable roles students play in the lives of one another need to be nurtured. Peer-based mental health and well-being programmes should be further developed and expanded and become a key feature of HEIs.

What is crystal clear to us in Jigsaw is that increased investment is now needed if we are to make a real, meaningful difference to the mental health and well-being of Ireland's young people and give them the best possible chance at a full and healthy future. The students of today are our future professionals, parents, politicians and One Good Adult who, in turn, will go on to support the mental health of future generations of young people.

I again thank the committee for this opportunity. I look forward to comments and questions from members.