Mental health services ‘deplorable’

TREATMENT for mentally-ill patients is “in a deplorable state” because of inadequate funding, the Irish College of Psychiatrists (ICP) said yesterday.

The organisation yesterday expressed serious concern about the lack of responsibility for psychiatric services at departmental level and the failure of the authors of the Hanly Report to seek the opinion of psychiatrists about reform.

Addressing the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health yesterday, ICP chairperson Dr Kate Ganter complained that funding of mental health services had fallen from 11% of the total health budget in 1997 to 6.6% last year.