Mental health funding shows the 'dark side'

The failure of the political system to adequately fund mental health services is the "dark side of the Celtic Tiger", a conference on suicide was told yesterday.

Prof Michael Fitzgerald, chairman of the Irish Association of Suicidology, said mental illness was the greatest cause of pain in Ireland.

But he said there was more electoral advantage in cutting stamp duty than in increasing the mental health budget.

Speaking at the association's annual conference in Sligo, Prof Fitzgerald said the mental health budget had dwindled from 11 per cent of the overall health budget in the 1990s to about seven per cent now. He said it could drop to zero without too many political repercussions.

This was at a time when children were waiting up to three years for appointments in some child psychiatry clinics and when patients were being forced to go to England for treatment for conditions such as autism and schizophrenia.

"This is the dark side of the Celtic Tiger," said Prof Fitzgerald, a professor in child psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin.

"We are now a property-centred society. We are obsessed with property. We are jumping up and down about tax cuts and stamp duty but a child's mental health does not matter," he said.

He said the proportion of the health budget allocated to mental illness should be doubled, in line with Britain and other European countries.

People were reluctant to discuss the issue because there was still a stigma attached and a fear of any problem relating to the mind, the professor claimed. But he urged the public to raise the issue with all political parties to make them see that it was not irrelevant.

In a reference to recent controversial remarks by Tim O'Malley, the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, Prof Fitzgerald said we were now being told that mental illness was a myth.

"It is not. It is the greatest source of pain in Ireland. We can clearly identify it. We can treat it. It is an insult to tell somebody who is suffering from a mental illness that it is mythical."

Mr O'Malley was quoted last month as saying that mental health was unlike other conditions such as diabetes in that it was impossible to scientifically measure the results of medication.

He subsequently clarified that he was not questioning the role of medication in psychiatry, but was simply raising concerns about the level of prescribing in the treatment of mental illness.

Prof Fitzgerald yesterday criticised the fact there were no scientific studies being done in Ireland to assess which treatments and which clinics were having the most effect.

"Decisions are being made by the scientifically illiterate, by people in pinstripe suits who are not basing their decisions on scientific evidence."

He said that children waiting up to three years for appointments at some child psychiatry clinics suffered from such conditions as depression, behavioral problems, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).