Mental health tribunals - Co-operation crucial for progress

MENTAL health sufferers are among the most vulnerable people in Irish society and thus it is worrying to note the level of dissatisfaction with recently introduced tribunals, set up specifically to protect the interests of those incarcerated to institutions against their will.

Instead of resolving the situation, a litany of concerns has been drawn up for the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the Mental Health Commission (MHC) over the operation of the tribunals, which in some cases appear to be generating problems rather than solving them.

For decades, the detention of patients in psychiatric hospitals against their will was the hidden scandal of Ireland’s archaic mental health service.