Ms Sarah Hughes:

To clarify, Ms Sarah Behan is unwell today. I am Sarah Hughes, the mental health programme manager.

I thank the Chairperson and members of the Oireachtas committee for the opportunity to speak to the committee today. I am the mental health programme manager for the Union of Students in Ireland, which is the national student representative body for students in third level education.

I want to draw the committee's attention to the current issues we are facing with regard to mental health funding in higher education institutions, HEIs.

The current funding allocated to mental heath support in HEIs is not core or multi-annual. While the extra funding provided for mental health during Covid is greatly welcomed, it only brought the student-to-counsellor ratio to 1:2,500, rather than the best standard practice of 1:1,000. This funding also only refers to core counselling clinics and does not take other staff, such as GPs, health nurses, disability support staff or administrative staff, into account, although they may be needed to fully support student mental health. A whole-of-campus approach is recommended by the national framework, and this cannot be achieved without core multi-annual funding.

While international researchers are loath to speak to an increase in mental health problems and suicide levels post-Covid-19, data from within Ireland, such as from the My World Survey 2 study, indicate that within this cohort mental distress was increasing prior to the pandemic, and appears to have continued to increase throughout.

Without core multi-annual funding, additional staff can only be hired on short-term contracts. This not only makes it difficult to hire appropriately-skilled staff, but also makes any kind of planning beyond the short term almost impossible. In addition, there is currently no information on how the mental health funding from the recent budget will be allocated. This is resulting in campuses not knowing whether they can keep staff on, or if they need to cut services. Ring-fenced multi-annual funding is needed to ensure that the mental health of students is seen as an integral aspect of college life.

Mental health staff are struggling to deal with the current demand of students presenting themselves in distress. Recently, on a campus visit, I saw the strain that is being put on services, as there was only standing room left in the waiting room for an emergency counselling drop-in clinic. It is important to note the fact that counsellors are expected to take on additional work related to the roll-out of various welfare-related policies. We have recently seen funding being allocated to allow for appointed roles to help with the roll-out of frameworks relating to ending sexual violence and harassment. We need to see similar funding being allocated to help with the roll-out of welfare-related frameworks. Without it, it may come down to a counsellor having to choose between rolling out a framework or dealing with students in counselling sessions.

Increased multi-annual targeted funding for student counselling services and other student support services must be put in place to allow for the continued roll-out of services to meet demand on an ongoing basis, and in line with recent publications such as the National Student Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Framework, Healthy Campus and 3Set reports.

We are seeing an increase in students who are registered as having a mental illness in higher education institutes. That does not include students with sub-clinical needs but who may need mental health supports throughout the year. We all have mental health and should be able to access supports easily when they are needed. While the launch of initiatives such as Togetherall is helpful, it should be in addition to core funding. After all, the aim of Togetherall is to meet a sub-clinical need.

A requirement of students applying to college through the disability access route to education, DARE, scheme is the provision of diagnosis by a consultant psychiatrist only. Ireland does not maintain an adult mental health service waiting list. However, it is widely accepted that were such a list to exist, it would be long and growing. This would be something similar to the child and adolescent mental health service, CAMHS, waiting list, which is exceptionally long. Many young people who are already engaged with psychology services are forced to join the end of psychiatry waiting lists because their current treatment provider is not permitted to verify their diagnosis.

Allowing psychologists to certify diagnoses for the purposes of DARE would not only reduce psychiatry waiting lists, but would also allow the higher education sector to take a step closer to being more inclusive, and is something that Union of Students in Ireland, USI, would fully endorse. USI supports the Psychological Society of Ireland, PSI's call for equity of funding for all trainee psychologists, including educational psychologists, and for an increase in places available on trainee courses to increase the number of mental health professionals in Ireland to a level that can meet demand, both on campus and across the country more broadly. USI calls for a change to DARE and in-college accommodations through disability services to move from only accepting a diagnosis from psychiatry to allowing a diagnosis from a PSI-accredited psychologist.

Best practice recommends increasing peer support to increase both mental health supports on campus, and to support student engagement, thus reducing drop-out levels. Work has also begun, both nationally and internationally, in examining the prospect of embedding well-being into the third level curriculum.

However, the issue to date here is that the majority of this work has been at local level in an ad hocway, not always centring the student voice in the development of such programmes. The Union of Students in Ireland recognises the continued work to increase student participation and the student voice in student mental health work across the sector is vital and must be done in a non-tokenistic co-creation approach.

National co-ordination, collaboration and funding is needed to help these programmes to grow in a way that works for each campus. The recommendations in the 3Set report, including, but not limited to, the National Student Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Framework, should be fully implemented and sufficient funding allocation to allow for this must be provided.