Grim statistics reveal a mental health crisis
All the research in the world will not change the appalling suicide statistics. What is needed is action, and action is about resources.
You say: " because the country's psychiatric services are so over-burdened people at risk often end up in A&E... cutbacks are behind the growing difficulties facing GPs."
However, what is not generally acknowledged is that three out of four admissions to psychiatric wards are readmissions, and that is one big reason for an over-burdened system.
What is also not acknowledged is the number of young people already in that system who take their own lives. How will pouring more resources into existing services change those readmission and suicide statistics?
Dr Dermot Walsh, inspector of mental hospitals, in his report for 2001, states that few mental health services in Ireland are willing to attempt new approaches "the inspectorate has for a long time past been concerned about the rigidity and unimaginative nature of the staffing in mental heath services.
"Such inflexibility has hindered staff development and progress."
An article by Evelyn Ring (Irish Examiner, July 18) reminds us that Ireland has the highest committal rate in Europe while "one-in-four families has at least one member suffering from a mental or behavioural disorder. Psychiatric problems account for up to a third of all health disability, but just 7% of the health budget is spent on these services". In addition, at least 50% of the homeless have a history of mental illness and 79% of prisoners in strip cells are locked up in solitary confinement not for their criminal behaviour but because of mental illness.
In what other situation would 'customers' go back again and again for a service that was failing them? But when there is no choice, where does that leave the 'customer'?
Joan Hamilton,
Dromina,
Co Cork.
