Remaining mental hospitals to be closed

A RADICAL overhaul of mental health services that will see the closure of the country’s remaining mental hospitals and the money from their sale spent on developing community-based mental health care will begin this year.

Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney said yesterday: “The commitment is there to do it. It will happen. There is no other way.”

Ms Harney was commenting on the publication of a major Government report estimating that €947 million will be required over the next seven years to develop mental health services, the bulk of which will be realised from the sale of the country’s 15 remaining mental hospitals.

The report, A Vision for Change, recommends that the hospitals should be closed on a phased basis and any funds released as a result of this move reinvested into the mental health service.

Ms Harney said an additional €25m had been allocated to the Health Service Executive (HSE) in the 2006 Estimates for mental health services and she was confident that this level of investment would continue in the coming years.

The closure of large mental hospitals and the development of modern psychiatric units attached to general hospitals, together with the expansion of community services, has been Government policy since the publication of Planning for the Future in 1984.

The latest report plans to develop more services in the community and emphasises the necessity of involving service users and their carers in all aspects of service delivery.

Ms Harney said the 1984 report had been followed by a series of cutbacks in health but, despite these, a lot of progress had been made.

She said the disposal of assets in the mental health area would make it an awful lot easier to realise the 800m needed to meet the capital costs outlined in the expert group’s report.

She also said the additional €22m needed to employ an additional 1,800 people was “very achievable.”

Junior Health Minister Tim O’Malley said around one in four people were affected by mental health problems at any one time.

He said 20,000 people were in mental hospitals during the 1960s; 12,500 in 1984, and 3,500 in 2004.

“Approximately 90% of people with mental health problems could be and should be dealt with in the community,” he said.

“Once a person was diagnosed with a mental illness, it was assumed by people who should have known better that they had the illness for life. Now we know better.”

The report has been welcomed by mental health-related groups including the Mental Health Commission and the Irish Mental Health Coalition established by Amnesty International, the Irish Advocacy Network and Schizophrenia Ireland.

Irish Advocacy Network chief executive John Redican said mental health service users were still struggling with an outdated, fragmented and severely under-resourced system.

“We earnestly hope that today marks a turning point in the Government’s attention to this neglect.”

The Irish College of Psychiatrists said it was an excellent report that provided them with a very workable plan for the future. They were concerned, however, that the necessary funding would not be provided over the seven-year timeframe.