Call to ‘rip up’ Irish mental health services which are 'not fit for purpose'

The mental health services are “not fit for purpose” and need to be “ripped up” in favour of a new approach, a consultant psychiatrist with the HSE told a conference at UCC yesterday.

Malcolm Garland, a psychiatrist at St Ita’s Hospital Portrane, and a senior lecturer in psychiatry at the Royal College of Surgeons, used the metaphor of a dying tree to describe psychiatry and community mental health teams.

“The tree is not savable, it cannot be made healthy, it must go,” said Dr Garland, one of six keynote speakers at a two-day conference organised by the School of Applied Social Studies, the School of Nursing and Midwifery and the Critical Voices Network of Ireland.