July 7, 2018, Limerick Leader: Calls to immediately staff ‘underfunded’ Limerick mental health service https://www.limerickleader.ie/news/home/322618/calls-to-immediately-staff-underfunded-limerick-mental-health-service.html LIMERICK TD Maurice Quinlivan has said that more staffing and resources need to be immediately made available at an “overwhelmed and underfunded” mental health service for children in the city. This comes as parents were informed of extensive waiting times for cases. … … This newspaper also previously reported in April that 953 children were placed on a waiting list for either assessment or intervention, and that the service had been without an intervention child psychologist for 11 months. … “I have been in contact with the Senior Clinical Psychologist in the School Age Service who has worked in the service for nine years. She said when she started the caseload was 120 children, but now it is 410. …
top of page
Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
bottom of page