Mental health care - Enough of reports, now for change

While it is improper to jump to any conclusions about who was responsible for the murder of Michael Hughes last weekend, his death in a frenzied attack, in which he was stabbed at least 80 times, has again focused attention on the area of psychiatric illness.

Our population has increased significantly since 1971, but the number of mentally ill people in care is about the same.

Treatment has undergone revolutionary change with residential care being replaced by community care, in which patients are put back into the community.

This is a distinct improvement on the old discredited system in which people were locked away and virtually forgotten. Society at large may have been able to forget about those unfortunate people, but the problems remained for the patients and their families.

More of the burden is being placed on families in dealing with mental illness, because the proper support mechanisms are not being implemented. There is a hidden army of parents and other family members who are saddled with the difficulties of tending to loved ones with mental health problems.

Those families not only deserve proper support, but also need it, because the system is failing.

While the love of their families may make up for a lot of other deficiencies, mentally ill people also need professional help.

We need to review both the funding and the structures to ensure proper intervention at the right age, because the present system is weakest where the need is greatest.

Three-quarters of patients, who show signs of mental illness in their mid-20s, have already shown symptoms in their teens.

This is the time when they could, and should, be helped most.

The Health Research Board’s annual report for 2006, which was published this week, indicated that even when young people were taken into care, more than half of the children had to be put in adult hospitals because of a shortage of dedicated facilities for young people. This is storing up problems for the future.

The Government commissions and finances reports and plans for advancement, but then seems unable to find the will or the way to implement those reports. Little has yet been done to implement the Department of Health’s mental health programme outlined in Vision for Change, which was published at the beginning of 2006.

“Mental health and the development of appropriate services are a priority for this Government,” according to Mental Health Minister Jimmy Devins. He insists that Vision for Change will be implemented within a 10-year framework. He defends the Government’s performance by citing the amount of money being spent, but the real judgment of any performance should be on the quality of the services provided, not the quantity of money expended.

The plan envisioned 98 community health teams throughout the country, but only 47 have been put in place. Some of those teams are still incomplete. Society as a whole is being put at risk.