Letters to the Editor: Mental health supports for young people welcome
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The Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP) welcomes the recent announcement by the Department of Education on the establishment of a €5m pilot programme of counselling and mental health supports for primary schools.
The IACP has been long calling for such a programme to be put in place, and more importantly into practice, to help young people and children who are experiencing mental health challenges.
The first strand of the programme will see pupils from primary schools in counties Cavan, Laois, Leitrim, Longford, Mayo, Monaghan, and Tipperary have the opportunity to avail of mental health support. While it must be acknowledged that the introduction of this pilot programme is a step in the right direction, our hope would be that counselling supports for all children in schools will be available across the country once the pilot’s results are analysed.
We believe that, on top of this, a similar programme should be rolled out in secondary schools going forward.
Those impacted by mental health challenges — especially young people — are at an increased risk of suffering from conditions such as moderate to severe depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and self-harm. It is important that the State builds upon this progress by expanding similar supports to all primary and secondary school children.
Lisa Molloy CEO Irish Association for Counselling and PsychotherapyDún LaoghaireCo Dublin
An alternative to suspending pupils
In recent weeks, it has been widely reported that there is a mounting level of anxiety among students, with more than half of pupils said to be experiencing anxiety and other mental health difficulties, and almost all teachers and principals noticing a rise in these issues in classrooms.
Although many reports directly reference primary students, this is an issue that stems into post-primary education, which can heavily impact a student’s behaviour and in some cases, result in suspension.
In Ireland, more than 11,000 students are suspended each year. That is almost 4% of the school population at post-primary level.
It is clear to me that there is a high level of support needed both for pupils and in schools.
At YMCA Dublin, we run an Alternative Suspension (AS) service which supports students at risk of disengagement from education or those who have been have been suspended.
This service aims to offer students the opportunity to transform their time away from school into a positive experience that fosters their personal development and autonomy.
We believe it should be a service rolled out to each school nationwide. To make this happen, we immediately need funding and Government support.
Through this service, YMCA Dublin can support schools to meet an urgent need within Irish education, improving educational outcomes through transforming a traditionally exclusionary experience into one of construction and positivity, and in turn, reducing anxiety issues among students.
By rolling out the AS service in schools across the country, collectively, we can change these issues for our students and their futures.
Kathryn O’Mahony YMCADublin 8
Our energy security is on a knife edge
Joe Brennan asks: “Where are the politicians with vision and courage?” with regard to our energy security — ‘Selling off our energy control is a disgrace’ ( Irish Examiner, Letters, May 25).
The truth is well documented about Ireland’s energy policies and security since the 1950s. Sadly, successive governments, through a mix of U-turns, incompetence, ideology, naivety, and political expediency, have squandered and mismanaged our valuable offshore oil and gas natural resources.
As a result, today and for the foreseeable future, our energy security is on a knife edge. We have no gas storage facilities and our only native natural gas source at Corrib is fast dwindling. We remain critically dependent on Britain for over 70% of our vital gas supplies.
We could have followed the example of the Norwegians and set up an independent state-owned statutory body with total charge over investment, exploration, production, delivery, and export of their oil and gas, out of reach of meddling politicians.
Today Norway has a state wealth fund of more than a trillion dollars while conversely, we have a national debt of €235bn.
As Joe Brennan reminds us, we are today gifting our offshore wind resources to foreign operators who will become billionaires in the process, thanks to the largesse of the Coalition and Irish consumers.
We have been subsidising offshore developers through the PSO levy for several years, as well as guaranteeing them exorbitant prices through the flawed state auction system. We are even guaranteeing them compensation if and when the national grid fails to accept their electricity output.
However, because wind is notoriously intermittent and unreliable and irrespective of future installed offshore and onshore capacity, we will be dependent on low-grade imported oil and gas for decades.
Yet the Government has irresponsibly stopped oil and gas exploration off our shores and has blocked issuing further licenses for the Inishkea gas field close to the Corrib field. It continues to hinder the further development of the independently proven Barryroe oil and gas field off the Cork coast.
Both of these fields, if developed, would supply cleaner, high-quality ‘sweet’ oil and natural gas to the Irish market by 2026 and afford us total energy security for decades to come as we transition to increased renewable energy.
John Leahy WiltonCork
Children and body dissatisfaction
“Body dissatisfaction, including a desire for a thinner body, is present in many girls by six years of age,” Joyce Fegan reports in her column — ‘Siobhán McSweeney’s radical act of being a normal woman’ ( Irish Examiner, May 19).
Disturbing or what? From where does that emanate, and how debilitating a burden being construed by young girls, surely via outside influence?
One presumes the average six-year-old girl isn’t quite at the stage of full-on social media enmeshment, so these dilemmas must be visited upon her by some form of adult entrainment, and those adults are most likely close family relations.
Precocious sensualisation of young girls is everywhere. Do they dress themselves? Do they make those ‘daring’ choices by their own volition? Do they shop for themselves? Are they being afforded the freedom to view adult media scenarios?
Seems like there is such a high threshold for any ‘management’ interference to kick in for so many children these days, so that an ‘anything goes’ attitude is gaining traction. The likely parental acquiescence to fashion advertising overkill, so easily transmogrifies to early peer pressure for children, to don the supposedly ‘sexier’ outfit and pattern an adult swagger way beyond their years.
If there is to be any modicum of personal body comfort, with at least a tinge of modesty, the urge to and surge in the pre-emptive push to ‘more and more’ skin exposure must be rigorously challenged. Otherwise, it all becomes so unworthy and destructive, and surely contributes to the eventual troubled range of body ‘morphia’.
Diplomacy is OK in moderation, as is child ‘body-boundarying’. Let’s forego the shallow advertising tsunami, since it cheats us all of our independence, our empowerment, our sense of balance, and our tolerance of diversity.
Jim CosgroveLismoreCo Waterford