Young people ‘wrongly in mental hospitals’

MORE THAN 1,000 young people with intellectual disability and chronic illnesses have been wrongly placed in mental hospitals, according to the Disability Federation.

Around 500 of these people have never even undergone a psychiatric evaluation, said the federation’s chief executive, John Dolan, a member of the Eastern Region Health Authority.

He said the forthcoming Disabilities Bill must include a charter of rights for those with intellectual disabilities or other chronic conditions.

“The legislation must be rights-based. It seems to be accepted that it is okay to put people in institutions but we have to ask ourselves why they are there.”

Mr Dolan, who is also a member of the East Coast Area Health Board, said that in many cases those institutionalised from an early age had long since recovered but were remaining in mental hospitals as there was nowhere else to put them.

“In his last two annual reports, the Inspector of Mental Hospitals has noted that there are people in mental hospitals who should not be there. We estimate that the number is over 1,000.”

The focus seemed to be to get those people out of acute hospital beds but the issue really was what could be done for them after that.

“Nursing homes are not always appropriate and resources need to be put in place so that they can live with dignity. This has human rights implications.”

He also said this raised issues of unnecessarily using up beds needed by acutely ill patients. “If we do not recognise these people’s need in a community context we cannot address the problem.”

Mr Dolan said that while the discourse around the young chronically sick often centred on bed-blocking, it should be treated as a major dignity and human rights issue.

“There are around 500 people with intellectual disability in mental hospitals without psychiatric diagnoses. The Health Strategy said this was inappropriate and this number is being slowly reduced,” he said.

According to Mr Dolan, the models for addressing the problems are there, although he acknowledged resources were always an issue. “If the wrong person is in an acute bed, staff and other resources are being wasted. There are huge opportunity costs involved. By moving them you get better return on the resources that have been put into the system already.”

“The problem is that we forget about the young chronically sick once they are out of the acute bed. Solving the bed-blocking problem doesn’t solve their problem,” he added.

Comparing the current treatment of chronically sick young people to the mistreatment of young people in the past, he warned: “If you are not dealing with somebody in a humane way it can come back and bite you in the future.”