Secondary-school aged adolescents in Ireland reported more mental health problems in 2021, including an increase in suicide attempts, compared to previous years, according to new findings published by researchers at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences.

More than a quarter of the adolescents described their mental health as “bad” or “very bad”, more than a third reported self-harming in their lifetime, and one in ten reported attempting suicide in their lifetime, results which may be partly related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The responses from more than 4,400 adolescents in north Dublin, Cavan and Monaghan highlight these and other concerning trends in mental health and offer important information for planning mental health services within the education and healthcare systems. 

This study is one of the most recent sources of evidence on the prevalence of mental health problems among teenagers in Ireland. The last time researchers investigated this on a national level was the MyWorld 2 survey in 2018/19. However, since then, major societal shifts have occurred in the lives of young people including the COVID-19 pandemic and new trends in smartphone use. This survey was carried out between September and December 2021 with respondents from secondary schools and Youthreach centres.

“This dataset is one of the most novel sources of information available on the mental health of young people in Ireland with the participants coming from both urban and rural communities,” said study author Professor Mary Cannon, Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Youth Mental Health at RCSI.

Digging into the survey responses revealed further insights. “The results show worrying trends in mental health for adolescents in general. In particular, those reporting poor mental health were more likely to be female, transgender or gender-diverse, to be from a financially worse-off family and to have experienced negative effects of COVID-19 on relationships and health,” she added.

The study found that 29% of the adolescents described their mental health as “bad” or “very bad” and 11% reported attempting suicide in their lifetimes. These figures are all higher than estimates from other recent studies of teenagers in Ireland.

Marked increase

“When we compared our findings to other similar studies conducted within the past ten years in Ireland, it suggests a marked increase in the prevalence of self-reported mental health problems among our young people. Research from other countries like England and the United States is showing a similar pattern, especially since COVID-19,” said co-lead author Dr Niamh Dooley who carried out the research at the RCSI Department of Psychiatry.

“While our results do not definitively prove youth mental health has worsened over time, they are highly concerning. Future research will be able to tell us whether these higher rates of mental health problems are specific to the geographic areas included, or the year of study, or whether they reflect reliable trends of worsening adolescent mental health in Ireland,” added co-lead author Dr Emmet Power, RCSI Department of Psychiatry.

Other specific findings from the study included:

• The most commonly reported negative effect of COVID-19 was a worsening of the school experience
• The negative impact of COVID-19 on family relationships was strongly associated with poor mental health
• One in every three transgender and gender-diverse young persons (non-binary and undisclosed) had attempted suicide in their lifetime (36%), and three in four had suicidal thoughts (77%). 
• Being an ethnicity other than white-Irish and experiencing relative poverty was linked with higher rates of many mental health outcomes, including psychotic-like experiences, self-harm and suicidal ideation and attempt. 

This study was carried out as part of the Planet Youth programme, which will survey mental health and substance-use problems in adolescents every two years (2021, 2023, 2025). 

The study was carried out by researchers at RCSI Department of Psychiatry and at King’s College London and was funded by RCSI, the Health Research Board and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under a Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant. The authors also acknowledged the support of Cavan and Monaghan Education and Training Board, North Dublin Regional Drug and Alcohol Task Force, North Eastern Regional Drug & Alcohol Task Force, TUSLA and the Icelandic Centre for Social Research and Analysis (ICSRA). 

Details are published in the paper ‘Mental health of Irish adolescents following the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from a population-based cross-sectional survey’ in the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine.