Crash test dummy approach to mental health will end in fatalities
TODAY (Tuesday) is arguably the biggest day in Michéal Martin’s political career to date. When the Fianna Fáil man addresses the nation with details from the reboot of the Living With Covid plan the nation will be watching, knives in mouth, for any double speak.
The truth has been unpalatable for some time. How the extended lockdown was leaked last week in an interview with an Irish Mirror journalist was disgraceful. The journalist in question did nothing wrong. We are there to ask questions; hard questions and that is what she did.
The Taoiseach may have been trying to be honest but what he said, effectively that Level 5 lockdown was continuing for nine more weeks, drove tens of thousands of people across the country into a mental tailspin. People with the sunniest dispositions have found themselves on the brink of the blackest depression over recent days trying to figure out how they can make their business work, life work, in mental quicksand.
The leaking of information which is having a real impact on people’s mental health is not helpful. It is as if the Taoiseach is using us as guinea pigs, driving us like proverbial crash test dummies into a wall of resistance to see what the test results are.
Committing political hara-kiri is a given during a pandemic but to do so with such enthusiasm suggests a leader who is struggling big time.
Throughout Covid-19 we have been living in a game-plan vacuum. Essentially it’s been a kite flying exercise to see how people and business lobby groups react to a plan of action. If the reaction is too strong, policy changes. There isn’t a hope in hell of us getting to under 100 cases any time soon. Everyone is too fatigued and you’ll always have the 5 per cent who just don’t comply. The best we can hope for is that numbers and deaths continue to fall until the warmer weather when we’re all outdoors more and then we can have some kind of a summer like last year. By then most of us will have been vaccinated, and barring a booster shot every six months or so to protect us against mutant variants, life can return to some kind of normality.
Whatever Michéal Martin and Taoiseach in waiting Leo Varadkar announce today, it should address mental health. Unlike Denmark, Ireland has not committed specific funding to tackling the Covid mental health crisis among our young. The national waiting lists for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) increased by almost 20 per cent in 2020 while the number of children waiting for over 12 months for support rose by 25 per cent. What has the government done? Nothing.
GPs across Wicklow and Wexford are reporting big increases in people calling with mental health issues. This crisis could be a silent killer. We need a government with a consistent message. Not one in which ministers have to clarify our Taoiseach’s utterances.
Where are the brochures about mental health? Where is the creative thinking? A World Economic Forum report issued this month highlights a rise in loneliness, sleeplessness and anxiety among over50s directly related to the pandemic. The report states that the crisis is greater among young people.
Some 2,736 children were on waiting lists for CAMHS as of December, an increase of more than 400 on December 2019. The number waiting over 12 months for services rose from 212 in 2019 to 266 a year later.