Ireland in 2018: the scandal of mental health services for children

This is longer than I had anticipated but I don't care.

I think I've just witnessed, on last night's RTÉ documentary on mental health services for children, some of the most courageous and dignified people any human society could produce. Easily the most poignant, heartbreaking and despairing programme I've ever seen on RTÉ. Children, parents and entire families on the edge of Irish society. You could feel that edge in every syllable. Goose pimples. It seems, after all, Irish state apathy to the plight of children does not just belong to 1950s Ireland.

RTÉ's The Big Picture: young and troubled

Christ almighty. Such a world of pain, heartache and ineffable suffering some families endure without succour from the resources of our state. Whether it's the parents waiting for months on the "urgent" list for their child to be seen after she, at 11 years of age, said she wanted to take her life to that child's father speak about how she finally took her own life... at 11 years of age. Spine-chilling. I've never been so moved by the dignity of somebody as I was listening to that man struggle to articulate the depth of his feelings, or his wife talk about family life before they lost their child, and now.... Then there was the parents of children who survived suicide. Articulating how the entire family was on 24-hour "suicide watch" because of the suicide attempts and how they waited months to get treatment - and when they finally got it, they were told the entire state has 70 beds for children and adolescents with mental health issues. 70 beds! Is that some really bad joke? Their child finally spent almost 3 months in one of those beds and it was as if the family had finally won the lottery. How do parents go out and keep jobs, pay the mortgage and look after their other children and do all the necessary stuff when that enormous pressure of a child attempting to take their own life has the entire home on tenterhooks every day? That's the bit I really don't get; life is tough and competitive enough with a whole raft of pressures and then there's that - when the state should be using its resources to save children and families at the very edge, it abandons them. Everybody interviewed felt that acutely.

How many more suicides of children must there be? I had thought after that spate of teenage girls taking their own lives in Donegal and Leitrim a few years ago that the state would finally put resources into mental health services. It's actually less resourced.... One woman was just a shell of herself talking about how there is no service at all in this entire state for her daughter who has a serious eating disorder and is now a shocking 28kg in weight. The woman has to leave her child in a special clinic for children with anorexia over in Britain and fly home to look after her other children.... And the child who waits 7 months to be assessed and then is told they need to go on to a new waiting list and they'll be there for 6 months or so before they'll be seen.... Then there's the other girl who just turned 18 and is in serious need of help but because she has just turned 18 she has to leave the child mental health services she had and wait up to 2 years on a new adult list to get access to mental health services...

This is entirely about a lack of political will, political priorities. The state could recruit more child psychiatrists and child psychologists and build specialised in-patient services for children and teenagers. It could give incentives to people to train in these professions just as it has paid/subsidised post-graduate conversion courses for people who want to get into IT. But it would rather give the impression that the days of Irish kids being treated like crap belong in the 1950s and that bright new modern Ireland with its children's ombudsman and minister for children is different. Those children, parents and families testify to a reality for Irish children in 2018 that should be a source of deep shame and dishonour for the political class of our state, starting with An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and then the Minister for Health of our state, Simon Harris.

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Twitter: RTÉ's Young & Troubled

There was a strong reaction to RTÉ's The Big Picture - Young and Troubled last night

There are over 6,000 children currently waiting to be seen by a primary care child psychologist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaWAb7O_8ls