"It's not just money that will solve the problem."
The Government is to provide an additional €84 million for mental health services next year.
Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe made the announcement as part of Budget 2019.
The investment will the bring the total available funding for mental health to €1 billion.
Mental health groups had called for at least €105m to be invested in Budget 2019 to tackle the mental health crisis in Ireland.
Last month, it was revealed that waiting lists for mental health appointments are getting longer.
There are nearly 2,700 young people waiting for appointments with the HSE's Child and Adolescent Mental Service (CAMHS).
Reacting to Budget 2019, Executive Director of SpunOut.ie, Ian Power, spoke to iRadio.
He said he welcomes the investment but that the money needs to be spent appropriately, particularly on recruitment and services for young people:
"It's not just money that will solve the problem but also we need to rethink how we deliver our mental health services for children and young people."
"We would always welcome the increase in funding and what we really want to see is how that money is going to be spent, particularly in recruitment, because so many of our services are operating at much less than they need to be in terms of the numbers of people working there."
Staff are stressed
Ian said the Child and Adolescent Mental Service (CAMHS) is "dysfunctional" and that staff are refusing to work in it:
"In the Child and Adolescent Mental Services, they are operating currently at around 55 per cent of the staffing levels. And a lot of that is to do with the way the system works."
"What we hear from professionals, who could be working in the system but aren't, is that the system is dysfunctional and it needs to be run in a more efficient way, so that when people are in working in the system it's not a really hard place to work."
"So what we want to see is ways in which the Health Service is going to improve the working culture for those in those type of services, so that they don't feel that level of stress, because obviously that's why so many people are choosing to work abroad."
Intervene earlier
Addressing the long waiting lists for mental health appointments, Ian said he wants to see services for young people "much earlier in their life cycle":
"We see a lot of children and young people waiting for acute services when they're really in quite serious levels of distress, whereas we know that if we can intervene much earlier and maybe perhaps allow people access to things like therapies and psychology when they're first experiencing difficulties, we know that that works to prevent people from feeling worse and maybe stop some of the problems before they get to the point where they need significant levels of care."
"So we want to see investment in primary care centres where people can get access to those talking therapies, rather than just being medicated, and then at some point down the road needing more serious and acute services."
Listen to the full interview with Garry and Fionnuala here:
