Teen Counselling works with teenagers and their parents in a bid to help the teens understand their problems and enable them to change their lives. Padraig O'Morain reports
Rachel is a confident young woman, studying for her Leaving Cert and looking to the future with hope.
Yet her short life has been studded with problems with drink and drugs and a painful family history.
The crucial difference, in her view, was made by Teen Counselling which has been working with teenagers and their parents in Dublin since 1973.
Teen Counselling is a service of Crosscare which in turn is the social care agency of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin. Its headquarters are based at Clonliffe College near Croke Park and it also has centres in Clondalkin, Tallaght, Ballygall and Ballybrack. It is funded by a variety of bodies including the Health Service Executive.
Over the years, clinical director Mary Forrest and counsellor Fidelma Beirne have seen changes in the willingness of teenagers and their families to talk about problems.
"They are more likely to say that the problem is about suicide or self-harm, for instance," Beirne says. "In earlier years, parents would say something like, she is not doing well at school, and you would have to trawl for further information."
People are also more open about marital disharmony, she finds, and about 50 per cent of clients are from families in which the parents are living apart.
"The fact that separation and fighting at home can be named now is enormous," adds Forrest. In the past, teenagers had to stop having their friends home to cover up the fact of a separation, for instance, she says.
The counsellors like to see parents and teenagers, usually with one counsellor seeing the teenager and another seeing the parents. "You are asking for positive change on both sides," Forrest says.
Alcohol is a growing problem for teenagers, Beirne says. In particular, she says, they have to face the possibility of losing their friends or their peer group if they don't drink.
Rachel had been in counselling since she passed out drunk on the street at the age of 13. She came to Teen Counselling after she reached the 16 year age limit for the service she had been attending.
She had grown up with alcoholism and mental illness in the household. Life had been so bleak that she would go home after school and go straight to bed. When she was 13, her parents separated, an event which "broke my heart". She took on the role of looking after her mother.
Then she discovered alcohol and it was not long before she was drinking bottles of rum. She began to use other drugs: cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine and heroin.
She believes her counsellor at Teen Counselling was a major factor in preventing her from going down the heroin road. "I hold him in very high regard," she says. "I think the world of him. He has had a huge impact."
She was also helped by a change of school and by a six-week residential placement for addiction therapy. Today she lives apart from her parents and faces the future with confidence. "It is my life and I have to look after me," she says.
Ashling took an overdose at 15 years old, because of difficulties in a relationship.
The hospital told her about Teen Counselling. "I didn't take up on it at the time," she says, "but about two years after that my Nana, my Grandad and my cousin died around the same time. It was pretty hard and Mam asked the hospital how to contact the service. I didn't know what to expect. All I knew was that I needed some kind of help."
She has been impressed by the ability of the counsellors to, as she put it, "root out where the problems came from". Like many a teenager, "I would not be the sort who would talk to my Mam the way I talk to the people here. It was great, not having to keep it all in my head."
The counselling has also helped her to deal with anger. Before, "I would go home and I might throw a mad one and be angry at everyone." The counsellors "gave me the advice to walk away from the situation."
John and his wife got in touch with Teen Counselling when they were worried about their 17-year-old son.
"He was a great young lad, never in trouble," says John. "But something was not right. He was quiet and withdrawn." John says he had "seen enough suicides in my time" to be worried. They brought him to the doctor who mentioned Teen Counselling. "Whatever happened here, he came completely out of his shell," he says.
John's parents reckoned he was okay when they discovered one weekend that instead of going to Arklow, as he had told them, he had gone to London. An incident which, in different circumstances, might cause parental rage, was now greeted with relief: they had a normal teenager on their hands.
"I have nothing but praise for the service here," he says. He wishes there were many more centres like it all over the country. "God only knows the amount of suicides and other things they could prevent."
Mary Forrest says the service could expand and reduce its waiting list if it had more funding.
• Teen Counselling can be contacted at 01-8371892.