State is failing mentally ill young people, conference told

The State has failed to respond adequately to the needs of more than 150,000 young people in Ireland suffering from psychological or mental illness, a conference on psychiatric services was told yesterday.

Policy responses to date had been "poor and speculative in nature", according to Mr Niall McElwee, of Waterford Institute of Technology.

Mr McElwee, a course leader in applied social studies, also criticised the Minister of State with special responsibility for children, Mr Frank Fahey, for "kicking to touch" proposals for State registration of social workers.

Mr McElwee told the Association of Psychiatric Nurse Managers' conference in Kilkenny that between 100,000 and 160,000 young people in Ireland had psychological or mental illness problems.

Yet, even with significant numbers of behaviourally-disturbed adolescents presenting in social care, very few Irish studies had been published on child and adolescent mental health.

"One of the more disturbing revelations around the provision of mental health is that 43 per cent of children in residential care studied by Focus Ireland were listed as waiting between three and nine months to receive an appointment with the relevant child and adolescent psychiatric service in their area," he said.

Social care and mental health preventative services for Irish children and adolescents at risk could best be described as "rudimentary throughout the 1970s, piecemeal and uncoordinated throughout the 1980s and scandal-driven throughout the 1990s.

Mr McElwee said there were few specialist posts in mental health in the State, with a significant amount of psychological care being provided by social care workers.

In a statement, the Department of Health and Children said the question of establishing statutory registration of designated health and social professionals, including social workers, had been under consideration for some time.