Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming in. We are all aware of the mental health crisis we are seeing. The second annual survey by Aware in 2024 indicated that little has changed in the past year, with more than half of respondents reporting depression and four in every ten respondents experiencing anxiety.The one in four adults living with a chronic illness are most likely to experience moderate depression. Three in five said anxiety makes work and attending to responsibilities very difficult. Additionally, 56% of respondents stated that financial worries are impacting their mental health. Despite the number of people suffering from mental health challenges, stigma is still a major issue. We already heard about it today. Half of the respondents cited shame and fear of judgment as the reason they delay accessing appropriate supports.

When so many people are experiencing mental health challenges, it is politically difficult to hear that stigma continues to be an issue in 2025. We heard other Senators speak about stigma. Senator McCarthy said coming forward should be seen as a strength and not a weakness. I totally support that point. We need to see how we as legislators and the Government can lead on this issue through educational awareness campaigns on mental health because it will only stop being a stigma when people come forward and are open about their own situations.

The situation among our youth is extremely concerning. Research from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland revealed that 29% of adolescents described their mental health as bad or very bad. Alarmingly, 11% have attempted suicide. We all know these figures are not abstract. The people involved are our friends, family members, colleagues and perhaps our children. Behind each number is a real story of struggle, resilience and, too often, a story of silence.

I am sure some of us in this room have experienced or struggled with mental health issues at some point in our lives. If we have not, perhaps it has been a loved one we have seen struggling with their mental health. It can be very scary when the right supports are not there. There is also hope, however. We have heard about hope from other people today as well. I pay tribute to Angela Hayes, who is the founder of Teac Tom in Kilkenny. She had a tragic personal story and from that she transformed her own grief into a mission of compassion and providing crisis support for thousands. In light of her work, she received the humanitarian of the year award from the Irish Red Cross over the weekend. I highlight this and congratulate her because it is a testament to the huge impact she has had, especially locally in Kilkenny. Her work exemplifies the spirit of mental health week around community-driven and rights-based approaches rooted in empathy. At the same time, it also highlights the urgent need for systemic support. In 2024, the HSE spent approximately €93 million on outsourcing mental health care to private providers. I think this figure has doubled since 2018. Why are community services like Teac Tom - which are doing brilliant work and are effective - being left to shoulder the burden of something I think is the responsibility of the State? Why is the HSE outsourcing mental health care instead of strengthening public service provision? Mental health services in Ireland have suffered from years of underinvestment and deprioritisation. In turn, that has left us with under-resourced and understaffed services. We need substantial funding in community-based services.

Senator McCarthy also cited that the mental health budget is not currently 10% of the overall health budget, which was recommended in Sláintecare. We need to get to that level. We are in a crisis in our mental health services. Until we back them with substantial funding, I do not see how we are going to be able to tackle it.

In a recent EU survey of more than 25,000 Europeans in our 27 member states, Ireland was cited as the loneliest country in Europe, which I think is a tragic statistic to have. Of the respondents in Ireland, some 20% reported feeling lonely. We must ask ourselves how we can address loneliness. It is an epidemic across Ireland. It is most acutely felt in rural communities like mine, which is on the border of Carlow-Kilkenny. The Minister of State also highlighted the challenge concerning men's loneliness in particular. Loneliness can be felt most profoundly by middle-aged and older men who do not have the same culture of openness and of sharing their feelings and emotions with their family and friends. More must be done to tackle this situation.

I acknowledge what I am sure we would all agree is the great work of men's sheds in addressing a large element of this problem and creating the space for connection and togetherness. It is these small gestures in the context of loneliness that can have a major impact. Once again, however, I say this should not be based on volunteers and community initiatives alone. We need proper State funding and provision and community-based services. I am not saying they should replace men's sheds, which do fantastic work. It must be in tandem. We cannot base our well-being and mental health outreach wholly on local volunteers.

Loneliness can happen to anyone at any time. It is not always clear from talking to someone if they are lonely and feeling depressed. It is pervasive, particularly in a world of telephones and online communication and when we are enveloped in our work and paying the bills. We have so many pressures, perhaps more than previous generations. We live in quite an insular society. We are seeing breakdowns in traditional community structures. For older people, this is particularly felt when they are facing economic pressures, suffered the death of a close loved one or experienced ill health. They might have a lack of family support because their younger family members have been forced to leave the country because of the cost-of-living and housing crises. All these things impact the mental health of communities. We should be taking a community approach to mental health in terms of services and how we perceive it. We need to move away from the individualistic culture we see in the modern age.

It is about a policy decision that includes social infrastructure and fosters inclusive and community-focused environments. We need to see the strengthening of the community mental health services. It is not just words of encouragement to get out of the house and socialise more that are needed. We really need to see proper infrastructure in place to support it.

I also wish to touch on mental health for young people, as so many other Senators spoke about. We have things like cyberbullying, social media pressures and reduced face-to-face interactions. Research shows a decline in youth well-being. If we were to go to any school or group of young people, they would tell us they are struggling with their mental health. They will say that, and it is fantastic they have the language to do it. Certainly, I do not think that in my generation we would have had the language and tools to say it. They are kind of screaming out for help, though, and I do not think their needs are being met. CAMHS is not fit for purpose. The waiting lists are depressingly long and many families are not getting referrals. The referral delays are so extreme. When it is possible to meet somebody, the time people are getting is not sufficient to actually address the issue the child is facing. This is also linked to youth services. Social activities are costing so much more than they used to. They are unaffordable for many families. The outreach options for young people are limited.

We already spoke about eating disorders. I am sure that some or many of us attended the Cared Ireland briefing in the AV room in February. It is an eating disorder charity. The panel of parents and survivors of eating disorders shared heart-wrenching stories of how they or their family members had been treated by the healthcare system. There was inappropriate language, with people being told they were just vain, needed to put on a bit of weight and it was all about how they looked. I hope we would all agree that eating disorders are obviously a mental health issue. There were reports of people being force-fed and denied proper treatment. Children suffering from eating disorders are often put in completely inappropriate healthcare settings. They are in Crumlin hospital on acute wards that are not for eating disorders. They can be in there for months being force-fed. It is not fit for purpose. I think the HSE has spent something like €13.5 million sending eating disorder patients abroad since 2016. This is not good enough. No one should be getting treatment abroad for anything, but I refer especially to young people going abroad for eating disorders and being away from their family and support structures. I am sorry if that figure is wrong. The Minister of State can come back to me on it. There are reports of kids going to the UK and other places for eating disorder treatment. This does happen, so we need to see more beds in Ireland for this type of treatment. This issue is particularly affecting children and, of course, young girls, who are often in the majority of eating disorder sufferers. It is particularly tragic that we have parents and families coming into the AV room to share these harrowing private details of their lives and basically begging for radical Government action to address these gaps. I hope we will listen to them and take steps forward urgently in a concrete way to respond to these issues. We cannot continue to have people just coming in and baring their souls to ask for help. We sit down and feel awful about it, but we need to be able to act on those things too and move forward with tangible improvements.

We heard from Senator Ryan already about the young man who presented in Galway hospital with severe suicidal ideation. He was not triaged and treated in an appropriate time. He left the hospital and took his own life. It is such a tragic story. We cannot have more incidences of this happening. Emergency departments are not the correct places for people to be receiving emergency mental health support. We really need to take radical action when it comes to this type of situation. It is a harrowing story to hear that someone would have the courage to turn up for support from a doctor in an emergency department, get turned away and then make the awful decision to end their own life. I hope we do not hear more of these stories in the coming years.

I am running out of time. I appreciate what the Minister of State said in her statement. I believe she has the best intentions. I hope when she is bringing her Bills to this House we will have the opportunity to work together and strengthen them so we are responding in a holistic way to the needs we are all seeing in our communities.