‘No change’ in child psychiatry in last 20 years

NOTHING much has changed over the last 20 years in the way the State cares for its most vulnerable children, a leading psychiatrist has claimed.

It emerged this week that almost 200 children were admitted to adult psychiatric hospitals last year. A Mental Health Commission report said some of the children were as young as 14.

Consultant child psychiatrist Kate Ganter said very little had been achieved to provide more in-patient psychiatrist beds for children.

“I am not criticising the plans. The plans are there but they are not being implemented. The celtic tiger has just passed us by,” Dr Ganter said yesterday.

The former chair of the Irish College of Psychiatrists said the Government needed to be put under increased political pressure to invest in child psychiatric services.

Despite successive reports highlighting what needs to be done, the Government had failed to improve the situation, she said. Anything to do with children always seemed to be put on the back boiler.

Dr Ganter said she spent hours and hours begging for a psychiatric hospital bed for a child when she should be seeing other children.

And she was very grateful when a colleague agreed to provide an adult psychiatric bed for a child.

Dr Ganter said a case could arise where a suicidal teenager needed to be hospitalised because the family are unable to cope.

“You really are very grateful you have somewhere that, at least, is safer than the situation that the child is in,” Dr Ganter said on RTÉ radio yesterday. But the situation was not good enough.

“We have been doing that all my working life and I have been in this business for quite a long time. I am at the end of my career and it has been exactly the same.”

Dr Ganter had been told that an additional 30 child psychiatric beds would be provided in the autumn but was not sure if that would happen. There had been no increase in the number of consultant staff needed to treat children with mental health problems.

Dr Ganter said staff numbers had actually decreased since last December because the funding needed to reinstate a vacant position had to be found within the particular service.

Dr Ganter said the piecemeal service could work for individual children but only when health professionals did their utmost for them.

“The guidelines are there so everybody knew what they should be doing. Getting the necessary resources is the problem,” she said.