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Students Maeve Lewis, Conor Peppard, James Meaney, Cormac Sheehan and Ciara Leonard from CBS and Presentation secondary schools with Minister Kathleen Lynch on her recent visit to CBS Mitchelstown. Photo: Sandra Quinn

Everyone has bad days, days they want to hide from the world and take solace under the duvet, pretending that the world outside has disappeared, but the main thing to remember is that this is normal - talk to someone and know that you are not alone.

On a recent visit to CBS Mitchelstown, Minister Kathleen Lynch from the Department of Justice, Equality and Defence with responsibility for disability, older people, equality and mental health, spoke to students about the services available for young young people, children and adolescents and she made it clear that nobody's life is perfect.

"The Conor Cusack’s and the Alan Quinlan's of this world, the big rough men are prepared to talk about their vulnerability and I mean, who hasn’t felt that, who hasn’t had a day when they don’t want to get out of bed.

"But it’s only a bad day and sometimes it’s ok not to be ok," she said.

She added that while the Government's mental health model, A Vision for Change has set out some fantastic models to follow, it's about educating the community and creating a society that is more aware and accepting of mental health issues.

"The Government can't be at every street corner, we need everyone in the community to buy into all of this. A big plus in mental health is how we've changed attitudes.

"There isn't a conversation or social night out now where there isn't a chat about someone's emotional well being."

Mental health is something that everyone needs to be aware of and no matter what age or sex you are or what point in your life you're at, it needs to be taken care of. One in four people will experience a mental health problem at some point.

Minister Lynch told the students that looking at the comparison between adult mental health services and those for children and adolescents, to her, the child and adolescent services are the ones that are least developed.

She added that in A Vision for Change, which sets out a vision for what the mental health service in Ireland should be like, it says the country would need 80 acute beds to cater for the children and adolescents who have a difficulty with their mental health and require in-patient treatment, but by the end of this year, the HSE will have the full complement of beds at 61 nationally.

The Minister also stressed that while the number of beds we will have does not match up to what was set out in A Vision for Change, she is keen to have more emphasis on outpatient services within the community, so that there are services where the young people are living.

She said that the majority of young people just need someone to listen to them and they will not need the type of intervention that requires in-patient care, but she added that serious problems with mental health begin from the very young age of 12 and have become embedded by the time the person is 25.

"When it becomes embedded, we end up with a lifelong problem. When you're 12, 14, 16, 18 - it is those bites in your life when things like relationships have a bigger impact, you might experience excessive drinking, isolation from your friends, people might be bullied and all of these things have a bigger impact than at any other time of your life."

She explained that services like Jigsaw and Headstrong are incredible, but these need to change as well, so that if someone walks in off the street, they can go in and talk to someone their own age who is trained in mental health.

"What we have to put in place is the type of Jigsaw that is on the street, when you walk in, the person you meet behind the desk will be someone your own age trained in mental health, the person who will pour you the coffee when you’re in distress is trained in mental health."

Minister Lynch said that the focus in mental health needs to be in intervention and community services, because if it's all focused on acute care, it is the equivalent of putting the entire budget into palliative care for end of life care, instead of putting funds into research to find the causes of the diseases.

"We do not have enough interventions and enough services available to young people, but we’re on the road.

"Mental health is not something that’s static, how we deal with it changes all the time and how we think about it changes all the time."

Minister Lynch told The Avondhu that there needs to be more help for young people, so that they know where to go and who to talk to if they are going through something.

Bringing things to a more serious note, she said that she heard a quote once that people who attempt suicide don't want to die, they simply want a different life and that is very true for many people - they are looking for an escape from what they are going through and sometimes they are blind to any other options.

Theoretically, A Vision for Change sets out one of the most admirable mental health plans in Europe, but with the embargo on recruitment, can the HSE staff this wonderful plan?

Minister Lynch defended the Government saying that certain organisations have said that the staffing is not in place, but she argued that it largely is.

Breaking it down, she said that they were allowed to recruit 414 people in 2012 and 96% of those are in place, and 96% of those to be recruited in 2013 are also in place, but she said that the last percentage of that 96% are still in the last stages of being vetted, working out their notice or coming back from abroad.

"We have a difficulty with smaller groups, like psychology, as we don’t produce enough psychologists."

She added that another difficulty is that the jobs are decided through a centralised recruitment panel and someone whose first preference was to work in Killarney for instance, could end up working in Dublin, so she said that they are looking at setting up local and specialist panels.

"This year, our priority for the €20 million is old age psychiatry and intellectual disability, it won’t take all of the €20 million, it never does and there will be other pieces as well, the new strategy for suicide prevention is about to come on stream and that will take additional resources."

Speaking about the group of students from Mitchelstown and specifically the group from CBS Secondary, she said that it is groups like theirs who will eventually drive the direction that mental health is going in.

"We have to be there to support and facilitate their activities," she said.

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