Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Bríd Smith. Mental health issues are the leading cause of disability among young people aged between ten and 24 around the world. According to research carried out by the Royal College of Surgeons for the Health Research Board in 2013, by the age of 13, one in three young people in Ireland is likely to have experienced some type of mental disorder; by the age of 24, this rate will have increased to more than one in two; more than one in 15 young people had engaged in deliberate self-harm; and, by the age of 24, one in five young people will have experienced suicidal ideation. Census 2016 showed that the percentage of people with a psychological or emotional condition increased by almost 30% between 2011 and 2016. This included a 140% increase in mental health conditions among 13 to 19 year old women and an 89% increase among adolescent men of the same age.

According to some reports, shockingly, 15% of 11 to 13 year olds have experienced significant psychological illness. As of May 2018, more than 6,500 children and young people were waiting for their first psychological appointment. Ireland is one of a small minority of OECD countries where young people are more likely to take their lives than older age groups. To address this, there is an urgent need to provide 24-7 access to mental healthcare for young people, including free access to counselling in schools and colleges, and to integrate mental health into the school curriculum. Crucially, there must be a major increase in funding for mental health services and a major expansion of youth mental health services.

I would like to focus on one of the key underlying causes of these issues. I believe that economic inequality, exploitation and the multiple forms of oppression that exist in capitalist societies are a major factor. According to the late social writer, Mark Fisher:

Capitalist realism insists on treating mental health as if it were a natural fact, like weather ... we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill? The "mental health plague" in capitalist societies would suggest that, instead of being the only social system that works, capitalism is inherently dysfunctional, and that the cost of it appearing to work is very high.

It is not an exaggeration to say that being a teenager...is now close to being reclassified as a sickness. This pathologization already forecloses any possibility of politicization. By privatizing these problems - treating them as if they were caused only by chemical imbalances in the individual's neurology and-or by their family background - any question of social systemic causation is ruled out.

The psychologist, Oliver James, also links the increase in mental illness to neoliberal capitalism with its emphasis on individual competitiveness.

The PNA commenced its industrial action today. This is relevant to this debate because, as with the magnificent strike of INMO members yesterday, higher pay for psychiatric nurses is crucial to solving the crisis of recruitment and retention in mental health services. On top of staff cuts, and an ever-growing mental health crisis, low pay is one of the main causes of the chronic understaffing of mental health services and the endless waiting lists. Low pay for mental health workers stems from the wider problem of cuts and ongoing underfunding of mental health services. The Joint Committee on the Future of Mental Health Care found that pay is a significant factor hindering recruitment and retention and, therefore, the problems in the mental health services are at root a problem of insufficient funding. According to the PNA, as of last summer, there were 500 vacancies for psychiatric nurses in the health service but the total number of additional nurses needed to implement the Government's long-term strategy, A Vision for Change, is closer to 2,000. The number of mental health beds was cut from 12,484 in 1984 to 1,002 in 2016. We need a major reversal of the cuts and increased funding in mental health services and, crucially, a major increase in funding for youth mental health services.

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