Psychiatric services for teens needed!

Teenage years are the most vulnerable, emotional times of a person's life.

However, shockingly there is no designated adolescent mental health service. Once a person reaches the teenage years they are no longer treated as a child but are placed in adult health services. A teenager has very different emotional needs to an adult and it seems crazy for there to be such a gap in the mental health service.

With high reported cases of teenage mental health issues in Ireland, such as depression, self-harm and eating disorders (to name just a few) it is disgraceful that there are no services that offer support or help especially for teenagers.

The only support for many of these issues is through organisations such as Bodywhys and Aware, which are both charities. However, even though organisations such as these provide a priceless service- their resources are extremely limited, as they have very limited funding. They cannot cope with the immense numbers of people requiring the services they provide and they do not have a specific network for adolescents. Although they have groups that are open to teenagers, these can be seriously intimidating if you are in the presence of an older age group.

It is impossible for a proper service to be provided if only between 5-10% of health funding is spent on adolescents. As teenagers are the adults of the future, you don’t need to be a member of MENSA to realise that it makes sense to inject a large amount of money into an overhaul of the mental health services, which will in turn help relieve a lot of unnecessary mental health problems in the next generation of adults.

Judging by the high suicide rate among young people in Ireland, it is even more important than ever that an adolescent service is set up in order to prevent young people from getting into such a crisis. This sort of practise would address a serious problem before it becomes a major issue.

A 10 year plan has just been put into place which will focus on the prevention of suicide- I am no doctor or psychiatrist but I can safely bet that if an adequate service is provided to adolescents the suicide rate will decrease significantly in the years to come.

An adolescent mental health service is such a simple solution to a major problem- so why is it not already in place?

By: Marie Duffy

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