Mental health care ‘must be improved’

PATIENTS and their carers are crying out for a better mental health service in a damning new report published today by the Mental Health Commission.

Report author Dr Elizabeth Dunne said the research showed there was a need for fast-responding and accessible services for people in personal crisis.

She said it also underlined the need for the availability and access to non-pharmaceutical interventions and ensuring that the views of carers were taken on board.

The Mental Health Commission has been calling for service users to be involved in all aspects of mental health services since it was established in 2002.

The commission’s chief executive, Bríd Clarke, said a clear vision had now emerged from recent publications on mental health services in Ireland on how the services should be structured and delivered.

Sandra Hogan of Aware, a support group for people with depression, said the latest study showed that mental health was still the Cinderella of the health service.

“Action to improve mental health services should have started yesterday because people are falling through the net,” she said.

People were not accessing the services and those that did were not getting the help they needed,” she said.

“They don’t know that there is light at the end of the tunnel and that they can recover from mental illness or that they can find a way to manage their illness and get on with their lives, That’s why suicide rates are so high in this country.”

The report clearly showed that people were only getting help when there was a crisis and huge harm had been done, she said.

Among Dr Dunne’s other findings are that the primary carers, most often family members, aren’t listened to enough by doctors and that the system is leading to a ‘revolving door’ policy of re-admissions because of its lack of follow-up care.