Mental health and suicidal behaviours among Irish adolescents - results from the Planet Youth study

Mental health and wellbeing outcomes for young people are poorly understood in the context of natural disasters. There is a little high-quality evidence at a population level describing mental health and wellbeing in young people in Ireland following the global COVID-19 pandemic. We invited all young people attending specific school grades living within two defined geographical areas (one urban and one rural) to participate. Young people completed a 60-minute survey on their health and well-being between October and December 2021 in school. We wished to investigate the prevalence of mental health difficulties and associations between direct COVID-19 related factors and mental health. A total of 4404 young people responded, and the overall response rate was 79%. The population mean difficulties score of the Strengths & Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) [1] was 14.89. The majority of young people reported that pandemic restrictions had a negative effect on their mental health and loneliness. Self-reported rates of lifetime self-harm were 37.75% and self-reported rates of lifetime suicide attempt were 11.14%. Urbanicity and female gender were associated with reporting poorer mental health outcomes. Infection with COVID-19, illness due to COVID-19 in a family member and death of a family member were not associated with mental health outcomes. Elevated SDQ difficulties scores at a population level may be a cause for concern as they have previously found to predict the population prevalence of current mental disorder within a 1-2% point margin of error. In comparison to previous population studies, this population of young people had markedly poorer mental health and wellbeing.