Professor Siobhán O’Neill warns ‘unless we act on children’s mental health, we’ll have failed a generation’

The Derry-based mental health expert issued the stark assessment during a briefing of the Stormont Education Committee on Wednesday.

“I’m increasingly concerned about the mental health of our young people and the impact the pandemic has had on them,” she said.

“We know prolonged stress and adversity in childhood leads to mental illness and, of course, it leads to poor educational outcomes, too.

“I fear that, unless we act now and we act strategically, then we will have failed a generation of young people.

“The school work that we need from our young people - the learning, the problem solving and complex thought - these are only possible when the body and the brain are calm.

“It is biologically impossible for us to learn when we are in a state of acute stress and anxiety,” she said.

Last August, the Magee-based academic reported a ‘huge surge in anxiety’ during the emergency. This week, she said this has had serious repercussions for the education of our young citizens.

“That’s where too many of our young people are right now. The repeated exposure to stress, particularly in childhood when we have neuroplasticity at its peak when the brain is developing and it actually changes and can change the body’s stress response pathways which can lead children into chronic anxiety where that stress response will always be switched on.

“That can increase the likelihood of behavioural problems caused by the like of an overactive stress response system and mental illness so it’s impossible to learn when our brains are in this state.”

Prof. O’Neill said legislators and educators needed to address this urgently because young people’s lives had been turned upside down.

“It is my view that we have to address the mental health impact of the pandemic on our children and young people and that needs to be prioritised so that our kids can return to education and be in a position to learn. The pandemic has been extraordinarily stressful for our children.

“In a few days, their worlds completely fell apart.

“Not only did they have to cope with the stress and uncertainty of a global pandemic that we were all dealing with and the prospect of death on an unimaginable scale, they also lost contact with their friends and teachers with the closure of the schools and it’s hard for us, as adults, to imagine what this has been like for them.”