Community’s vital role in mental healthcare
It is now imperative that the Department of Health takes steps to address two crucial factors:
1. The stigma still attached to those who suffer mental health problems.
2. Growing drug addiction and alcohol consumption.
Mental health promotion should become a function of the education system. We need a system that acknowledges the pressures young people face on a daily basis. For this to happen, those charged with shaping the formative years of children must be given awareness training.
Also vital is the role that local communities can play in helping to develop a programme to deal with young people engaged in substance abuse.
The department should consult with local communities in order to gather constructive ideas from those most affected by the problem. The community, in turn, should also be able to support anyone with a drug or alcohol problem.
Victims of substance abuse, especially those who develop mental health problems as a result, should not be criminalised, degraded or humiliated.
Unfortunately, the help currently available is inadequate. The mental health services have been crippled by lack of foresight and under-funding. This is why the response to the causes of mental health deterioration and substance abuse must come primarily from our communities and work its way up through the various levels of public administration.
The alternative is to settle for further ‘initiatives’ from the department that will inevitably become bogged down in bureaucracy. Such inefficiency will ensure that vital resources will never make it to the front line of primary mental health care. Community involvement is crucial to ensure that the department is made accountable for the implementation of any practical response. Why should we settle for anything less?
Darren O’Keeffe
44 Leesdale
Model Farm Road
Cork
