Extra beds needed for those at risk of suicide, says expert

HOSPITALS WILL need extra emergency beds for people who have attempted suicide because of the recession, a leading psychiatrist has said.

Patricia Casey, professor of psychiatry at the Mater hospital in Dublin, said in the current financial climate, crisis intervention beds were needed to cope with a probable upturn in attempted suicide and self-harm.

Speaking at the Dáil subcommittee on the high rates of suicide in Ireland, Ms Casey said two people had presented to her clinic at the weekend in need of emergency beds because of attempted suicide or suicidal thoughts. She said one man, a senior executive, had been given notice from his employment; the second man, an overseas builder, had been let go from his job.

She said neither man was mentally ill, but both were in acute crisis and needed to be kept in hospital. "All evidence suggests suicide rates do go up during times of recession," she said. "And I'm in no doubt self-harm will escalate."

Ms Casey said one or two crisis intervention beds attached to the psychiatric unit in each general hospital would be needed to deal with the increase.She also said there were therapies available for self-harm patients four years ago that are no longer available.

Ms Casey said the reality was there were no services to which she could refer a person who self-harms. There had been nurses at St Vincent's hospital, Fairview, specially trained in dialectical behaviour therapy, but they had been taken back into the wards due to a shortage of nurses. "I'm not sure the HSE has any idea what they are doing about this," she said.

And she criticised Reach-Out, the national strategy for action on suicide prevention, published by the HSE in 2005. She said any report with 96 guidelines was "doomed to failure".

She said the ideal would be to have multidisciplinary teams throughout the country. Though they had first been recommended in 1965, she was aware of some consultant psychiatrists who did not have access to psychologists, some with no nurse therapists or occupational therapists and others with no social workers.

Ms Casey said we needed more indigenous research into intervention therapies and there needed to be a confidential inquiry into suicides. She said there was no evidence to show suicide awareness programmes were good, and studies recommended confidential screening for individuals in schools instead.