Ms Annie Sheppard:

As with our previous report, many who work closely with young people were consulted on this topic. A massive issue within our current health system is the lack of co-ordination among the various agencies and departments. According to a number of mental health professionals consulted, the referral process in Ireland is described as being impossible to navigate and completely unfit for purpose. Waiting times are unacceptable. A student with a broken leg would not have to wait months to be seen by a suitable professional. Why are mental health issues considered problems that can wait? There needs to be a massive increase in funding and transparency in this area. A recent example was when a senior member of our school management expressed frustration at being unable to access a CAMHS assessment for a student who desperately needed it. The parents of this child were told it would be May 2023 before an assessment would be available. This was true the private system where the parents were willing and able to pay for the assessment themselves. Can the committee imagine how long the waiting list is for public patients? This is completely unacceptable. There needs to be a massive increase in funding and transparency in this area.

Social media has changed almost all aspects of our lives as young people. We can hardly remember a time when it did not exist. We are overloaded each day with images of perfect people with perfect figures, perfect skin, perfect families and perfect lives. How can we, as young people, tell what is real and what is not? When we visited the committee in June of this year, we spoke about our Young Social Innovators, YSI, project, which is called "Be Aware, Don’t Compare". Our project focuses on the pressure young people feel to look a certain way and how they compare themselves to the hundreds and thousands of images we see online each day. Many of these images are edited and our project calls for legislation to ensure that edited or photoshopped images carry a tick to say that they are not original. We won a national award for our project and are now taking part in a program called YSI Elevate, which pairs us with industry mentors to continue work on our project. We feel very passionate about this issue as it has a massive impact on mental health.