Ms Trish Murphy:

I am speaking from the position of the Irish Council for Psychotherapy, but also as a student counsellor and the acting director of Trinity Student Counselling Services. As our colleagues already said, we know that anxiety and depression are on the rise in our young people. Particularly, My World Survey 2 was fantastic in giving us those figures.

Mental illness is likely to surface in the ages from 17 to 25 and therefore is also likely to present in the student population. Increasing diversity in third level also means that students with pre-existing mental, physical and emotional needs are attending colleges and our international student population has significantly grown. All this points to the pressure on services at third level, including health, counselling and disability services. These are the primary points of contact for young people of that age in this country. A decrease in stigmatisation of mental health issues plus increasing anxiety and academic pressure to do well have all been factors in the huge rise in demand for counselling service and even the private sector is having huge difficulty in meeting the surge in need.

Psychological Counsellors in Higher Education in Ireland, PCHEI, was founded in 1994 by a group of student counsellors from third level colleges. They met for a number of years and the organisation has developed and represents student counselling services in the vast majority of higher education institutes, HEIs, in Ireland. Student counselling services are dedicated mental health support services available free to all third level students.

The role of student counselling services, first and foremost, is to provide psychological counselling to students who may be experiencing personal adjustment, development or psychological problems. They also play a preventative role by assisting students to identify the learning skills required to effectively meet their educational and life goals. They are involved in the support and enhancement of student well-being throughout the campus community and play a role in contributing to safety and risk on campus. Student counselling services provide a range of key mental health interventions: clinical assessment; one-to-one counselling; group counselling; online support; risk and crisis management; outreach and prevention; training for HEI staff to support students; policy and procedural development; psychological health workshops and programmes; and developing peer support programmes.

PCHEI is full of highly qualified, professional student counsellors. Its psychotherapists are eligible for accreditation with the Irish Council for Psychotherapy. They are also eligible for qualification with PSI, which we just heard about, and the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Accreditation means that practitioners are properly qualified to work to recognised standards of professional competence.

I added a slide that members will see. The numbers of unique students presenting for counselling last year, across the HEI sector, was 14,500. They served 70,000 clinical sessions for that age group across Ireland. As members can see, that is a huge number. However, this year will completely overshadow that because already the rise in demand this academic year has far exceeded that of previous years. Currently in Trinity we have a 23% rise in demand for one-to-one clinical services.

I turn to our funding issues. Most funding for student counselling comes from core budgets of colleges. In the past two academic years, the Government has given funding to colleges, which has allowed for more counselling sessions to take place, plus outreach work on the consent and suicide prevention frameworks.

However, the reality is many counselling centres have become rapid access in that they serve crisis and emergency demands first, and this lessens the possibility for therapeutic change as there are consequences for ongoing short-term therapy models. If this cohort, that is, student counselling, continues to be the main provider of mental health services to this age group, more resources need to be made available to meet properly the psychological and psychiatric needs of the students. This will necessitate more counsellors, more access to psychiatry and a more varied response to our rising international and diverse student needs. The expectation is that a large number of students will enter our third level system as they flee war in their countries. This will necessitate a mental health and trauma-informed response that will put extra pressure on a system already under excessive duress.