Mental health support service sees explosion in online traffic

One of the country's main support services for youth mental health has seen an explosion in online traffic since the Covid-19 outbreak here and warned of "hefty fallout" in the months to come.
Mental health support service sees explosion in online traffic

One of the country's main support services for youth mental health has seen an explosion in online traffic since the Covid-19 outbreak here and warned of "hefty fallout" in the months to come.

Jigsaw Youth Mental Health suspended all face-to-face services on March 12 but its Director of Communications and Fundraising, Mike Mansfield, said since then there has been a 440% increase in traffic to its website to avail of new online services.

Mr Mansfield said more than 6,000 teachers have also been in touch to download a range of courses and that Jigsaw has also contacted almost 2,000 young people who had been using its face-to-face services before the coronavirus outbreak, and 600 parents.

He said a number of themes are now emerging among those young people and their families.

"Isolation and loneliness," he said. "We are seeing a couple of bits around the bereavement and grief. A lot of people are saying they are losing people and not having an ability to grieve in the normal way.

"The third bit is the real concern among young people for their parents. A huge amount of them have lost their job and business."

He said this is manifesting itself in some young people diverting stress and fear away from themselves towards those that offer them care, which he said has echoes of what occurred during the economic crash.

Mr Mansfield said that if a recession is to follow the pandemic, that will be the second recession many young people will have experienced, in addition to the impact of the Covid-19 emergency itself.

He referred to the My World survey results published by Jigsaw last November which showed that levels of stress and anxiety among young people have already risen considerably over the past decade.

"All that was going on anyway and then throw this into the mix," he said. "It’’s clear to us there will be fairly hefty fallout."

Mr Mansfield said Jigsaw is very keen to re-open its face-to-face services as soon as possible but admitted the pandemic could be "a gamechanger" for the organisation, which may instead be dealing with a growing number of cases of young people with more acute issues.

However, one group of children may be benefitting from the current restrictions.

Mary Gamble, director of the fundraising and retail division of Barnardos, tweeted: "One of the most poignant points I heard today in a Barnardos staff meeting was there has been a noticeable drop in anxiety in a proportion of the children we work with - the kids that get mercilessly bullied day after day in school feel safer and happier at home."

www.jigsaw.ie

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