Review: Children in a state of denial

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2101-2491330,00.html

The Sunday Times December 10, 2006

Review: Children in a state of denial

LIAM FAY

They sound older than their years. However, the precociousness of

children with psychological problems is neither cute nor enviable.

The premature wisdom that these lost innocents have acquired has

come at a high price. Most of them suspect that they're not so much

advanced for their age as too far gone.

The haunted voices of these remarkably self-aware children were the

centrepiece of Prime Time Investigates: Not Seen, Not Heard (RTE1,

Mon), a landmark documentary about the state's abandonment of young

people afflicted by mental ill-health.

With greater awareness of conditions such as bipolar depression,

ADHD and schizophrenia, the scale of psychic disturbance among the

very young has become increasingly apparent. An estimated one in

five Irish children has psychological issues. Juvenile suicide is on

the increase.

Yet the services and treatment available for them are hopelessly

outdated and underfunded. The few whose disorders are diagnosed are

invariably coshed with medication or consigned to adult psychiatric

wards.

Childhood behavioural problems do not simply go away; though if you

wait long enough, the childhood will. But disturbed children

frequently become delinquent adolescents. " We see sad children turn

into bad children, " observed one psychologist.

If these youths survive, they can become severely troubled adults,

often embarking on paths that lead to violent crime. By then, of

course, the state is only too happy to intervene, with money no

object when it comes to the building of prisons.

The reporter lucidly outlined the statistics of this

monumental failure. However, it was the case histories, recounted by

the children themselves, that widened the eyes and boiled the blood.

There was the suicidal seven-year-old with Asperger's syndrome, who

had spent more than half his life on treatment waiting lists and is

now deteriorating fast. There was the psychotic young man who

wanders Dublin's streets, because he has been deemed too dangerous

to live with his family or institutional patients. And there was the

disturbed 17-year-old, who killed himself while awaiting a

psychiatric assessment.

Unrestrained by self-control or aggravated by paranoia, a disturbed

child can be the ultimate expression of humanity's darker side, all

our emotional demons rolled into one small package. What was most

striking about the featured children, however, was not their mental

frailty, but their enduring resilience.

Despite their twitchy demeanour, or the arms scarred like butchers'

chopping blocks from years of self-harm, most of these youngsters

seemed to understand precisely the extent to which the odds have

been stacked against them.

Their self-knowledge was in stark contrast to the smirking denial of

Tim O'Malley, the junior minister responsible for mental health

policy, who claimed that health-service psychiatrists enjoy having

long waiting lists because " it makes them feel powerful " .

Produced and directed by Maire Kearney, Not Seen, Not Heard was an

understated but devastating film. It neither sensationalised the

crisis, nor sentimentalised its victims.