Shame of shocking mental healthcare system

RTÉ’s Primetime last Tuesday turned the spotlight on conditions in some of our psychiatric hospitals.

The programme served as a vital reminder of the fact that a sizable number of our fellow citizens have for decades suffered in virtual silence, physically and emotionally, under a squalid, inhuman, and outdated mental health care system.

What they have endured has been the opposite of care in that they have been in many instances deprived of their dignity, their lives turned into a daily penance that the inmates of jails would be complaining about were they asked to accept a similar regime.