DO you have any idea how hard it is to make a complaint against a consultant psychiatrist, if you feel you have been mistreated?

THE spirit of Christmas is coming to Cork tomorrow when children and families are invited to an event to make decorations, cards or gifts — and it’s all free of charge.

DOCTORS and academics risk “professional suicide” if they reveal the adverse side-effects of anti-depressants and other psychiatric medicines, a leading academic psychiatrist has claimed.

MENTAL health campaigner John McCarthy has criticised a statement from Ireland’s psychiatrists defending the quality of the country’s mental health services and its role in advocating for mental health patients.

JOHN McCARTHY, the founder of the advocacy group, Mad Pride, has challenged the country’s leading psychiatrists to prove that he ever suffered a mental illness to justify him being locked up and forcibly medicated.

THE use of force within the mental health services whereby people can be incarcerated and treated against their will must be stopped.

THE family of a 40-year-old man being involuntarily detained in a Co Kildare psychiatric unit have claimed they have been told they cannot access his medical records because they “went public” with his story.

MY stay in hospital, three or four years ago, confirmed for me that, while care was usually present in abundance below doctor level, there was no real competence left anywhere.

THE work that a Cork-based group has done to help break down the stigma attached to mental health problems and raise awareness about the “normality of madness” is set to be honoured at a European conference.