THE GOVERNMENT’S recently introduced programme to destigmatise mental health “may not be the best use of money in these recessionary times”, according to the former inspector of mental hospitals. Dr Dermot Walsh said this was because a number of initiatives similar to the See Change programme in other countries, including England and Scotland, had disappointing results.
But he said it was characteristic for this country to embark on measures in the field of prevention as well as treatment, particularly in the area of mental health, “which we never subsequently evaluate for their effectiveness and whose frailties have often already been exposed elsewhere”.
Dr Walsh suggested that a first step in tackling stigma – which has prevented the early treatment and rehabilitation of mental disorder in Ireland – may be for professionals working in the area of mental health to look at their own attitudes and practices.
"Unfortunately, mental health professionals make a major contribution to negative images for purposes of promoting their own interests, by portraying caring for the mentally ill as dangerous, and use the media to publicise instances of violence experienced in the course of professional duties," he writes in the latest edition of Irish Psychiatrist, the journal of the College of Psychiatry of Ireland.
He said service providers and others may also contribute to stigma by treating pyschiatric illness in isolated, stand- alone mental hospitals instead of in general hospitals with the rest of illness.
This perception is added to by the current state of some inpatient accommodation, made worse by media depictions; by denying long-stay patients a right to vote; and by the overprescription of antipsychotic drugs in dosages beyond that required for responsiveness, inducing stigmatising side effects.
The Department of Health said it provided national lottery funding of €85,000 for the See Change campaign in 2010 and a further €145,000 this year. The campaign was launched last April.
It claimed there had been positive shifts in attitudes towards mental health problems in various countries around the world using such strategies.
Changing people’s attitudes and behaviour towards people with mental health problems was not necessarily an easy task, however, internationally and more recently domestically there was a growing base of knowledge and experience about what works most effectively, it said.