HIQA ‘should audit services’

THE health watchdog HIQA or a similar body should be charged with checking on mental health and suicide prevention services, according to a professor of psychiatry who has researched suicide deaths.

Prof Kevin Malone of UCD’s School of Medicine and Medical Science and of St Vincent’s Hospital, said: “We still don’t know who is doing what, where, and how frequently, around the country... Until we know what we are doing and how we are doing it we can’t make progress.”

Prof Malone appeared before a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health this week to discuss a study which looked at the experiences of 220 relatives of 104 people who died by suicide in 23 different counties.