State ‘failing’ in vision for mental health services
Addressing the Simon Community seminar on the health impact of homelessness yesterday, Dr Siobhan Barry said addiction services needed to be genuinely resourced and the consequences of not adequately addressing addiction was playing itself out on a daily basis in our health services.
Dr Barry’s comments were made as a specialreport revealed that three out of five homeless people using support services had a diagnosed mental health condition.
The information was gleaned from a one-week snapshot health audit of homeless people undertaken by Cork Simon community, as part of a nationwidecampaign to highlight homelessness.
Cork Simon’s director Colette Kelleher said the findings revealed that 58% of the homeless people had a diagnosed mental health condition, 77% had both a diagnosed mental and physical condition, and 52% had both a diagnosed mental health condition and used alcohol/and or drugs. Almost half had a diagnosed physical health condition.
More than a third were described as “heavy users” of alcohol, one-in-six were described as “heavy users” of drugs, and one-third displayed aggressive or challenging behaviour.
According to the audit, there were more than twice as many heavy users of alcohol as there were heavy users of drugs. Heroin was the most-used drug among those described as heavy drug users.
Dr Barry said alcohol was key factor in homelessness, but two task force on alcohol reports have been ignored by the Government.
She added that it was often difficult to get people with psychosis the right treatment, as the new Mental Health Act has made it more difficult to involuntarily commit someone to hospital.
“It can be extremely difficult to get people into treatment. Legally we can do nothing, people think we have more power than we do.
“It is slightly irregular but there is no other mechanism,” she said.
Meanwhile, Dr Chris Luke, consultant in emergency medicine at Cork University Hospital, said during a 100-day period, a homeless person presented to the emergency department every 36 hours.
He said for homeless people, it was not a choice, but usually because they had been picked up by gardaí due to violence or alcohol issues.
Dr Luke said city-wide collaboration between homeless services, health services and mental health services was needed to tackle the issue.
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