New figures obtained by RTÉ News show that up to August this year, children in Dublin were waiting up to 13 years to be seen by a primary care psychologist.
The Primary Care Psychology Service is the first step for children after they present to their GP with mild to moderate mental health issues.
It is designed as early intervention before a child might need to be seen by a service such as the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, known as CAMHS, which is for young people with moderate to severe mental health difficulties.
The figures show that there are currently over 28,000 children waiting to see a primary care psychologist, and over 15,000 of these children have been waiting for over a year.
As of last August in Dublin northwest, children were waiting up to 13 years for an appointment.
The Health Service Executive has since said that the waiting time has now been reduced to 10 years.
One woman, who wants to remain anonymous, told RTÉ News about her daughter who is autistic; she was on the primary care waiting list for five years, but she was never seen by a psychologist and she ended up in crisis and availing of CAMHS.
"We ended up going to CAMHS because at this point our daughter was having multiple meltdowns a day and these are not temper tantrums, they are complete meltdowns where you lose the ability to sometimes speak or to walk or to talk and violence becomes part of it and it's a very distressing situation.
"So, through her stress and anxiety we ended up going into Crumlin (hospital) ourselves because we were totally at a loss on how to help her at this stage, it was extremely distressing.
"We met psychology in Crumlin, they were really nice and they kept her up there overnight and CAMHS were notified about the distressful situation we were in and how difficult it was, and it was quite an unsafe situation at this stage, and CAMHS rang us and they were the ones who came up with a plan to try to work through some programmes with us."
The woman said she believes her family was failed by the service.
"We never got to see anybody apart from as a parent, they never ever got to meet our child and anytime we tried to push for when, how long is a piece of string, is there any time they can tell us. Will it be two years, will it be five years - they never saw her in all that time."
This woman's daughter has now been moved off the primary care psychology waiting list and onto a waitlist for the Children's Disability Network Team.
'God knows where she would end up'
Parents say that is something that seems to happen regularly, children being moved on and off the primary care psychology wait list.
Jaimie Williams' four-year-old daughter is showing traits of autism and ADHD, and has constant anxiety.
In September this year, she was moved from the primary care psychology waiting list, after being seen, to a waitlist for the primary care area assessment team.
Watch: 'It's a joke’, says mother whose child will wait four years for assessment
But she has been told she will have to wait six years for an assessment for a diagnosis. Jaimie says her daughter is struggling on a daily basis while waiting for services she desperately needs.
"She struggles every day just to try to live a normal life and managing day to day it would be a rollercoaster. Just trying to get through normal daily existence, going out to the shops, coming home and having meals, just normal day-to-day stuff.
"I feel like I have gone above and beyond to beg for help for her because of how she struggles. If not for our dedication to helping her ourselves, God knows where she would end up.
"We are doing all this without help without assistance and so I'm stuck researching therapies and things to do at home and researching possible diagnosis, just so we have half a clue what we are dealing with because we are not going to know until she’s ten years old - that’s a joke."
Psychiatrists say the long waiting list in primary care psychology is impacting CAMHS waiting lists, and they say children’s mental health is getting worse due to the lack of services.
Dr Patricia Byrne, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Chair of the Child and Adolescent Faculty in the College of Psychiatry, said the lack of primary care psychology services is resulting in CAMHS services almost reaching breaking point.
She said: "Currently there is a complete lack of available services in the primary care area resulting in a huge increase in referrals of these children to CAMHS, stretching very limited services further, to almost breaking point at times."
Dr Byrne said that the longer children are left without services the more prolonged their distress and the more likely they will develop more serious mental health difficulties.
Commenting on figures showing children are waiting 13 years in some areas, she said children are being failed by the State.
"These are numbers that you would not expect to see in a third world country, let alone a first world country that has good finances, children are being completely failed by the system."
Dr Byrne said there are a number of reasons why primary care services are in such a bad state.
She said: "Primary care services along with all mental health services have been chronically underfunded, under resourced and understaffed, over the years we have an increase in population, Ireland is one of the youngest populations in Europe.
"Also, we have had a significant increase in the rates of mental health disorders. All of this has led to a massive mismatch in resources versus demand."
Children’s Ombudsman Dr Niall Muldoon said the system is failing children in Ireland.
He said: "They need to get early access to primary care so an issue doesn’t develop into something worse, and to hear that many children are waiting more than a year is so hard to fathom.
"But it’s a time bomb waiting to happen because those children, the longer they have to wait for the first intervention, the more likely they will need longer treatment.
"When it's up as far as 13 years, I mean that is not a waiting list, that is diabolical. That is outside of your childhood now. You won't even go onto that waiting list now until you're five so that child is now an adult and that should never happen."
'Limited numbers of psychologists'
Doctor Sinéad Feeney, who is a GP in the Crescent Medical Centre in Galway, said the lack of primary care psychology is a huge problem for her patients.
She said: "There is basically no point referring children to the primary care psychology because the referrals either come back to us saying they have been added to the waiting list and they can expect to be seen in a few years, or we are told that they are not the appropriate service and they should look elsewhere.
"But there is no option, especially for a child that doesn’t have the means to go privately.
"If you happen to be a child who is born into a family of means then you have got an advantage, and then if you're from a low-income family you have got the double whammy of poverty, and the options are extremely limited."
The HSE said there are 181 primary care centres across the country, but it says that due to limited numbers of psychologists they are not located in every centre nationally.
The HSE said there are 200 psychologists working in primary care overall and that they are available in each health area.
In a statement, the HSE said it acknowledges that some individuals are facing very long waiting lists for primary care.
It said that from 2017 to 2025 there has been a 62% increase in referral rate for Primary Care Psychology.
The HSE said that the increasing referral rate remains a challenge.
It said children's services by their nature are more complex in presentation and require more episodes of attendance compared to services for adults.
