A change in attitudes to mental illness is as essential as legislation

Mental health care is a complex, challenging and deeply rewarding area (‘Psychiatric patients feel coerced into hospitalisation’, Irish Examiner, August 8).

Ireland’s mental health services have been transformed over the past 50 years: in 1963, there were 19,801 people in Irish psychiatric hospitals, and by 2013 that was reduced to 2,401. Ireland’s involuntary admission rate is now lower than that of England, and the Mental Health Act, 2001, provides additional protections for detained patients.

Notwithstanding these reforms, clear challenges remain.