The shocking state of our mental hospitals

CONDITIONS in some public mental hospitals remain Victorian, while private psychiatric facilities are state-of-the-art, a damning report by the Government’s mental health watchdog has found.

The stark inequalities between public and private services are among numerous items which come in for sharp criticism in the latest report by Inspector of Mental Hospitals, Professor Dermot Walsh.

The report, published yesterday, also concluded that 11 hospitals provided "unacceptable" levels of care, while there was a virtual absence of in-patient residential care for children and adolescents.

According to the report, three children, one as young as 13, were kept in an adult psychiatric ward in Limerick. One of the children had been there for more than a year.

Professor Walsh expressed concern at a new power enabling gardaí to order the detention of immigrants in a mental hospital without any psychiatric evaluation and warned that upcoming legislation on criminal insanity breached international human rights law.

Outlining his concern about inequalities between public and private facilities, Professor Walsh pointed to unacceptable differences in standards in hospitals, at times just metres apart.

"In the case of the new admission ward in St Patrick's, the contrast with the acute admission wards of St Brendan's Hospital, a few hundred yards across the Liffey, could hardly have been more striking," the report said.

Other examples included state-of-the-art accommodation at Dublin's private St Patrick's Hospital, which the report found contrasted sharply with "the Victorian realities of ward one, St Bridget's Hospital, Ballinasloe".

Professor Walsh said such blatant inequalities were even more worrying given that a recent Health Research Board report found disadvantaged social classes suffered worse from psychiatric illness.

Although considerable progress was said to have been made in improving inpatient services, 11 hospitals including the Central Mental Hospital, St Bridget's Hospital in Ballinasloe and St Ita's in Portrane were found to have "seriously unsatisfactory conditions".

The number of modern outreach and home-based psychiatric services a central plank of the Government's stated mental health strategy was also found to be inadequate.

Professor Walsh attacked the Hanly report for giving so "little thought" to psychiatric care.

Health Minister of State Tim O'Malley pointed to the continuing decline in psychiatric patients, down from 3,966 in 2002 to 3,701 last year, and said an expert group on mental health policy should report to the Government next year.

The National Association for the Mentally Handicapped of Ireland said successive governments had persistently failed the mentally ill.

"This is something that if they really wanted, they could tackle. The inspector has been saying the same things for years and it doesn't seem to get any attention at all," said general secretary Deirdre Carroll.

"The Government keeps talking about their caring side these days. This would be an ideal opportunity for them to actually do something," she said.