Mental health report - Prison is no place for mentally ill

THE scandal of using Irish prisons as ‘psychiatric waiting rooms’ — the equivalent of A&E trolleys in overcrowded hospitals — is a damning indictment of the State’s failure to address the problem of mental illness in society.

The first study of its kind, revealed in today’s Irish Examiner, reveals a major systems breakdown and shows that 60% of female prison inmates and 35% of male inmates have suffered from mental illness at some stage in their lives.

Above all, it highlights the need for Government to divert people with mental health problems into treatment and out of the criminal justice system. And it underlines the urgent need for greatly improved mental health services within the community and in our prisons.