Mr. John Duffy:

One thing Senator Kelleher asked about was what we would like to have in the report. From my perspective and perhaps from that of BeLonG To as well, positive coping strategies should be instilled among young people from a very early age. This does not really happen across the board for young people and it could really benefit young people, for example in education - I think that is a natural place where some of that work can happen. That is really important from our perspective because of what we have been seeing within our service. Pieta House came in and is providing a service with us at the moment. When it first opened up, we thought that the service would be oversubscribed from a very early point, but unfortunately, young people from the LGBTI community have such a low expectation for their mental health that they thought that it is normal to self-harm and okay to think about suicide. It was not until our youth workers and other staff members started talking to young people and saying that that was why the service was there for them that people started coming into the service much more frequently, to the point now that the staff member from Pieta House in our service is kept very busy.

The issues of minorities relate to that. It is not just LGBT young people that need to discover more positive coping strategies, such as help-seeking or solution-focused strategies around mental health. It is also related to - as Inclusion Ireland has said - those with disabilities, young Travellers, asylum seekers and refugees. There is a much larger range of individuals than just those I have mentioned. There really needs to be a focus on those minorities that are more likely to experience higher levels of morbidity around mental health, because of the stark statistics that are there, as have been indicated by myself and others here today as well. There should be a focus there.