Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I want to focus in particular on youth mental health. In the years I have been a public representative there have been several clusters of teen suicides in my area in which the age profile is disproportionately young. It causes long-term irreparable damage to the families involved and their communities.

People want to try to stop and reduce the possibility of such cycles recurring.

It is only when a person who has direct experience of this comes to us that we are made aware of issues we may not have paid attention to as we should. One parent in particular who came to me pointed out issues in our national strategy, Connecting for Life. This parent showed me the chart on page 3 on the level of teen suicide in Ireland, which is the fourth highest in Europe. Countries such as Greece and Spain, which have faced significant financial difficulties, are at the far end of that chart, yet we feature at the wrong end of this spectrum. One must ask what we are doing to cause this to occur. The figures are shocking.

We are trying to consider what we can do and how we can make a positive impact to change what is wrong. Headstrong carried out a good survey in 2012 which included a report on well-being in primary schools. This report highlighted important issues, such as the need for a supportive adult and it was found that where people had someone trustworthy to talk to, this reduced levels of stress. Bullying, addiction and many other issues were highlighted in the report and it was found that a mental health problem made it more likely there would be an addiction. This reinforces the point just made by Deputy Shorthall.

One issue the parent who came to me pointed out concerned the kind of discussions that might happen with a trusted adult, for example in schools. The parent mentioned that page 115 of the strategy encourages schools to deliver, but does not make this mandatory. She wanted to get across the point that we need to have inservice training for teachers. She made a point that the problem with the suicide clusters was that youngsters were talking to each other in a language of emotional immaturity, but that we need wider engagement. We need a structured coping mechanism in schools to provide that kind of engagement. She wants that kind of initiative made mandatory as opposed to being "encouraged". She made the point that when such an initiative was taken with issues such as teen pregnancies, the HSE made the strong argument that this strategy worked. This parent wants a similar strategy used in the area of mental health, particularly for teenagers in the school setting. This initiative would only need a small amount of money, but would pay a significant dividend.

I support the campaign of the Psychiatric Nurses Association of Ireland. I have seen it happen before, in areas such as speech and language therapy, where we start with a budget in January, people do not get recruited until September and we are told the budget cannot be used. If it is known that something is about to arise, we should make the provisions at a point where we can use the budget allocated. What we are doing currently is postponing the solution. We cannot continue to do that. Within the health budget, the mental health budget is constantly picked off, as if mental health is a secondary issue. It has been the poor relation of the service. Taking these moneys from the mental health service has sent a bad signal. Most of us participated in the people's debates over the past year or so and the one issue that arose in every debate was the issue of mental health. We need to pay attention to the public demand for money to be spent in this area. Moneys for mental health services must be ring-fenced. We also need a strategy.

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