MIND MOVES: 'Mental health, whether in young or old people, is almost like a bad word. It'll kill a conversation at the drop of a hat. Shh, don't say it. People will think you're weird if you mention those two words."
"Within each child, younger or older, there is a smaller child with a sad, scared, worried, angry or upset story to tell. We need to help them help their little child to talk."
"Lonely, scared, isolated. No one knows what I'm going through, No one understands. I don't know. I don't understand. How can anyone else?"
"It seems to me that we cannot, and must not, separate the theme of youth mental health from the theme of our health as a society any more than we could think of plant health apart from the health of the soil."
"As a society we need to do everything in our power to ensure that stigma and discrimination, which have historically had such a negative and harrowing effect on so many people with mental health problems, do not continue to have such an impact on the next generation." - A selection of participants' responses when asked what youth mental health means to them while attending a forum in UCD.
The recent distressing suicides in Dublin have once again brought into focus the difficulty for young people in talking about their mental health needs and accessing the help they need when and where they need it.
At the height of midsummer and in competition with the World Cup, a public forum was convened in UCD to address the challenge of how we are to respond meaningfully to young people in crisis. The capacity audience of up to 600 people, the intensity of their listening and sharing, and the passionate demand for better mental health services left no doubt that this indeed is a "time to act".
Participants were asked to write down, in words and images, what youth mental health meant to them. Their responses were collected and arranged in a gallery display outside the hall so that people could read them when they were leaving the event. The quotations above were taken from this gallery.
The painful impact of inadequate services on young people and their families was recounted over and over. Our mental health system is weakest at a time in the human lifecycle where it needs to be strongest. The need to provide timely and effective services to young people in settings where they feel comfortable, safe and respected was viewed as a matter of urgency.
Evidence that this can be done and that it works was presented by Prof Patrick McGorry, from Melbourne, whose innovative service, Orygen, is acknowledged worldwide as one of the most creative and effective models of response to the mental health needs of young people. But the most powerful articulation of the mental health challenges facing young people was made by two UCD students who were part of the panel of speakers.
Dan Hayden, incoming president of the student union, brought humour as well as empathy to his account of the experience of a student's emotional experience. Despite appearances of being carefree and irresponsible, student life can be a lonely experience, compounded by feelings of gross inadequacy and depression.
His fellow student speaker, Sinead Corcoran, emphasised, however, that young people don't need to have their darker moments written off as unfortunate or regrettable disruptions. What they need is support and expertise which validates these experiences and encourages them to engage with difficulties. Young people in crisis "don't need pity", Sinead said, "they need understanding and respect. From my perspective, the road to mental health is a journey of discovery and adventure. A journey that at times is reliant on the support of others, but ultimately a solitary quest for one's true self. It can often start with a violent plunge into the core of self, and can be a slow climb out, but in that climb one gets to see and touch all the layers which make up the whole. In this story there are no victims, only heroes," she said.
Issues highlighted at the forum included the need for basic education in the healthy management of feelings and emotions, preferably taught as part of the school curriculum from an early age; access to specialist expertise for those who are facing complex and painful crises in their lives; a safe space in which young people in distress can recover a sense of their identity and dignity.
The only regret from the night was that so many people who wanted to speak did not get the opportunity to do so. Feedback to the organisers, The National Centre for Youth Mental Health, communicated a desire for more time and space for contributions from the wider public and for young people themselves to lead the debate. Participants called for further events like this public forum to be held across Ireland.
The night demonstrated the value of affording the wider public - young and old - an opportunity to express their experience of the mental health system and to articulate their priorities. These contributions made clear just how widely and deeply this issue impacts on families across Ireland.
