The number of children on medical cards who've been prescribed psychiatric medication has increased by nearly 500 percent over the past decade.
The rise amounts to more than 5,300 medical-card patients.
A new study by UCD and Jigsaw yesterday shows one in four young people in Ireland suffers from anxiety.
Today, new figures released by the HSE, under the Freedom of Information Act, shed a light on the number of people in Ireland who are being treated with medication for mental health issues.
In 2009, 1,150 children under 15 years old were prescribed psychiatric medication under the medical card scheme.
But this has increased noticeably every year since then - rising to just under 6,500 children last year.
Brendan Kelly, Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin, says a recruitment crisis in the HSE's child and adolescent services is a factor in the trend.
The trend is out of sync with the same stats for the general population, which has seen only a 12 percent rise in the same time frame.
