LAST NIGHT RTÉ took an in-depth look at how young people across Ireland are struggling with mental health issues. Before you proceed with reading this, we’d like to warn you that this show featured content that many viewers will find upsetting.
RTÉ’s Keelin Shanley opened the show by informing viewers:
Mental health, particularly children’s mental health, has long been understaffed and under-resourced. There have been some truly tragic consequences of this.
This point was really driven home by an interview featuring Fiona and Tim Tuomey, a couple whose 11-year-old daughter Milly died by suicide.
Tim spoke about Milly’s death, and the indescribable pain that he and his wife have experienced as a result of losing their daughter. No parent could ever prepare themselves for losing such a young child to suicide and although they did everything they possibly could have done, they still feel responsible.
Fiona spoke about the family’s experience dealing with Ireland’s mental health services:
Anybody who dies by suicide, you are always left with the ‘what if?’. However, where you ask for help, where you child asks for help, and you get into the system in the hope and in the assumption that you will be helped… And you realise, and we’re at the situation where we weren’t helped.
If the video won’t play, click here.
People on Twitter were in awe of Tim and Fiona’s courage to speak about the tragic loss of their daughter.
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Bressie tweeted along as he watched the show.
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He shared some sobering facts.
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Many viewers asked the same question: Why is Ireland’s approach to mental illness to treat the symptoms rather than the causes?
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Sheila Naughton, from Gogglebox Ireland, stressed how important intervention is.
For the last few months, Sheila has been using her Instagram account to document her journey as she battles an eating disorder. She said that everything she was taught to work for in life – education, a degree, etc., it all became meaningless when anorexia took over her life.
If you have an hour and a half free over the weekend, and you’ve been fortunate enough to never require assistance from the state when it comes to mental illness, this show is well worth a watch, and it’s available to watch on RTÉ Player.
In the documentary, artist and teacher Joe Caslin spoke about how in his first five years of teaching, he lost five students to suicide.
If the video won’t play, click here.
I can still see those faces. Those are kids who were in my room, who are no longer in that seat. It’s hugely devastating that you don’t get to see that person anymore.
In 2013, the RCSI found that young Irish people have higher rates of mental health issues than those in the USA and across Europe. Over half of Irish young people will suffer with a mental health problem by the age of 24. This cannot go on any longer.
If you need to talk, contact:
Samaritans 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org
Aware 1800 804848 (depression, anxiety)
Pieta House 1800 247247 or email mary@pieta.ie – (suicide, self-harm)
Teen-Line Ireland 1800 833634 (for ages 13 to 19)
Childline 1800 666666 (for under 18s)
