1,000 of our young people die tragically each year:– half of them die in road accidents; and the other half (in round numbers) take their own life. Yet the amount of public funding given to road safety is several times greater than the amount ear-marked for suicide prevention.

The difficulty – we are sometimes told – is: How to find a way to target suicide-prevention funding so that it is immediately effective among the youth population? However, there is just no mystery. A tried and trusted service to young-people-at-risk has indeed by now been identified: but, unfortunately, no sooner has it begun to prove its effectiveness – than it is withdrawn!

There are three main reasons why ‘going for help’ can be a turn-off for young people: (1) The mental-health services have an ‘oldie’ image; (2) It is difficult for young persons to open-up in an unfamiliar situation – they are not going to ‘do it cold’; (3) They are afraid of people noticing them going for help – in their eyes, this carries a stigma.

Fortunately, the one particular scenario which side-steps all three obstacles is: the school-counselling situation. Here, pupils do not have to suddenly step into a predominantly adult culture… They develop familiarity with a counsellor by first surfacing school and study issues… And no one will be any the wiser as to why precisely they are visiting the counsellor’s office.

COUNSELLORS ARE IN CONTACT ALREADY

“School guidance counsellors are the only mental health professionals to whom teenagers have direct access on a one-to-one basis. They are in the frontline of dealing with issues such as suicide ideation, self-harm, eating disorders, bullying and depression”, according to Sheila Wayman (Irish Times). She quotes a typical school counsellor : “In every conversation we ask how things are going at home, how study is going… It would be guidance but you would also be looking at the whole person”.

Another counsellor contributed this: “If a student comes in and I felt they were at risk, I investigate do they have a plan in their head and how serious are they”. Sometimes (this counsellor continues) it is a case of giving them reasons for living; and this can be a holding position until they are referred for specific professional help. (Remember the case of that 16-year-old boy who harmed himself because he failed to get a meeting with a school counsellor?).

Teenagers are people of impulse. One girl was quoted as saying: “You get so down. You are not getting the nutrition you need so your head is not straight and your hormones are all over the place. You get suicidal thoughts… You need someone to tell you that your thinking is not right, it’s not normal and they are going to help you”.

These are all youngsters about to fall through the cracks in the system if school-counselling is not available as their safety net. And it has been demonstrated to be quite an acceptable support-structure : Of the 12 to 19-year-olds recently surveyed, broadly 1-in-every-4 are just as prepared to consult a teacher / guidance counsellor in an emergency as a psychologist (25% and 28% respectively).

YOUNGSTERS ON THE BRINK

It may be worthwhile to recall what eight thousand 17 to 28-year-olds told UCD’s School Of Psychology, and the youth mental-health organization Headstrong, when they were surveyed : 2-in-every-5 admitted that they had gone through periods believing that life was “not worth living”. 1-in-every-5 had self-harmed. And 1-in-every-16 had made an actual suicide attempt. Half of these latter, it should be noted, did not go for help. (Joanne Hunt, Irish Times).

“Only beginning to be felt now, since the start of the (last) school year” (insists Sheila Wayman) is “the impact of the decision in the last budget to do away with the ‘ex quota’ allocation of counselling hours – based on the number of pupils in a school – and leave schools to find the hours within the existing allocation of teachers”. (“All schools must continue to provide guidance to students”, says a directive; but counsellor-posts are being withdrawn).

This decision would already sound retrograde – in an era of youth unemployment – viewed purely from the perspective of ‘mentoring’ individual pupils’ aptitude towards a career (the guidance counsellors’ official task). ‘Best practice’ in other countries indicates that one-size-fits-all training courses are a blunt instrument, when it comes to launching a young person on a viable career-path. But the recent budget decision also “flies in the face of all the public rhetoric about the risk of suicide and all the worry about the people of a certain age”, according to psychotherapist and school guidance-counsellor Dr. Brendan Byrne (Wayman article). Speaking of counsellor colleagues, he declares: “The very people who were there in the frontline providing their support – their contact has now been reduced. It just does not make sense”.