Plans to treat mentally ill ‘three years late’

GOVERNMENT plans to treble the number of mentally ill prisoners treated in the Central Mental Hospital have still not been implemented more than three years later, it has emerged.

This is against the background of widespread concern among forensic psychiatrists at the extent to which severely ill prisoners are being kept in prison.

Research published this week estimated at least 300 people with serious mental disorders were being sent to prison every year.

“We are still operating with the capacity to admit 100 people a year. We need to admit about 300 people a year,” said Dr Harry Kennedy, head of the Central Mental Hospital (CMH).

An agreement between the Department of Health and the Department of Justice, completed in May 2003, on the CMH, planned to:

Increase prisoner transfers to the CMH from 100 to 300 a year.

Create 30 more beds, using existing vacant beds.

Recruit 60 extra staff.

Spend €6 million over two years.

Dr Kennedy said the number of beds in the CMH had fallen from 89 beds to 76 beds and that they couldn’t cope with the demand from prisons.

He described as a “disgrace” the long waiting time severely mentally ill prisoners faced to get into the CMH.

“I said it before and I say it again, prisons are the psychiatric equivalent of accident and emergency trolleys.”

The 2004 report by the Inspector of Mental Health Services found that €635,052 remained unspent in the 2003 budget for the CMH, enough to recruit 12 nurses and open an extra eight beds.

“The substantial under-spends and staff shortages of recent years ought to be regarded as a sign of corporate mismanagement,” said Dr Kennedy.

He pointed out that conditions at the CMH — condemned by European and Irish inspectors — had significantly improved.

A spokesman for the Health Service Executive (HSE) said a number of the measures in the agreement had been implemented including: refurbishment of a new unit, modernisation of an existing unit for patients with challenging behaviour, and extensions of the hospital’s out-reach programme and in-reach prison services.

“The staff complement has increased and the HSE is continuing to source additional personnel,” he said.

He said the CMH was due to move to a new greenfield site at Thornton, Co Dublin, beside a new “super prison”.

“This new facility will be a major step forward,” he said.