Mind Moves/Sarah Hayden:When I think about "youth mental health", I think of the thousands of teenagers who are somehow managing to live their lives while secretly disintegrating, wishing for oblivion.
They are not quite at the point of falling away, but neither do they feel any comfort in being themselves.
They keep on keeping on, wondering if it is only at the edge of the cliff that the crowds appear with nets. These are the invisibly fragile, unheard young people whose experiences all too often become grim statistics.
Jamie is one of these people. In crowds, he shyly watches passing faces. Sometimes, his eyes meet an expression that mirrors his own brittle gaze. Last year, he would have approached this sad girl in the corridor but now, the anguish that so visibly seeps from her threatens to engulf him entirely. He walks on.
He cannot afford to dissolve entirely when everyone is expecting him to remain an on-stage presence in their shiny, solid lives. He has slipped into another dimension but no one has noticed that he's not there any more.
Jamie is afraid that one night as he slips out early from a gig, or one day in a quiet classroom, someone will actually see him. They will ask him the dreaded question and expose him.
Secret poisons will pour out of him, ugly and unstoppable. The semblance of normality is, he believes, his only defence against utter destruction.
His mind floats briefly to the surface of a school-day, to catch the end of poetry class. Yeats' words somehow permeate his sodden mind: "The centre cannot hold." This prophecy becomes another mantra - comforting because it promises change.
On brighter evenings, he wonders if there is maybe some professional listener who could disentangle reality for him. He considers the school counsellor, but worries about confidentiality.
Senseless school policy requires parental permission to make an appointment and this paralyses him. Once he started to explain to his mother but her tears struck him dumb. If sadness is contagious, he is determined not to infect anyone else.
The family GP might possess the requisite skill but her consultation fee neatly closes down that option. Hollywood champions psychiatry, but a brusque secretary on the phone informed him that a referral was necessary.
He has seen listings for psychologists but is not sure what they are.
Without reliable information, further action is impossible. Sometimes he feels that just speaking honestly for a while, being allowed to discard or at least to lay down the mask of "getting on with things" would be almost enough. He is worn out from pretending.
He can recall watching The Neverending Storyat his fifth birthday party and remembers the nightmares that followed. In that film, the stoic child warrior watches aghast as his sole companion - the magical horse who accompanied him in his quest to save a dying world - is swallowed by the "Swamp of Sadness".
"Everyone knew that whoever let the sadness of the swamp overtake him would sink into the swamp," the hero explained to a generation of appalled children.
Although he no longer believes the swamp to exist, the horse's fate is becoming more and more real to him. Jamie fears that soon his sadness will drown him entirely.
What he needs is honesty. He needs to hear that he is not alone He does not need to hear that everyone gets blue or that what he is experiencing is normal, to be borne. That will not be enough.
He needs to know that people around him have lived through such empty, lonely times and, crucially, that they survived with their identities intact. He needs to believe that at 16, what feels for him like a solitary descent into madness is not a one-way street.
When he ends his fearful silence, he needs his family, friends and teachers to be actively open to hearing and responding to what he has to say. He needs to be taken seriously. He needs to be sure that when he asks for help, it will be given - but first he needs information.
He deserves to be informed about the supports that exist for young people in distress and he has the right to be able to access these supports independently.
If professional care is required and normal life falls away for a while, he needs the people to love him and to remember that he still has the same hopes and talents he always had: to go to university, to travel, to love, to dance again.
If he must be a "patient" for now, if he must be wrapped up and kept safe, he needs to be assured that this is only a temporary role.
When he is afraid and thinks he is alone, Jamie needs us to be honest.
We are all the inhabitants of fragile inner worlds. Ultimately, it is only when we are honest as a society about mental health that we can hope to raise young people who are confident, emotionally adept and vitally aware of both their vulnerabilities and strengths.
• Sarah Haydenis a youth adviser to Headstrong - The National Centre for Youth Mental Health. She has recently completed an arts degree in University College Cork.