Money sought for suicide prevention

There is an almost €15 million a year shortfall in suicide prevention funding in the Republic when compared with Northern Ireland, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children heard yesterday. The committee met the Northern Ireland Assembly Health Committee to discuss possible areas for co-operation in suicide prevention.

Fine Gael's Dan Neville highlighted the £3 million budget for suicide prevention in Northern Ireland and compared it with the €4.5 million funding for the National Office for Suicide Prevention in this State. If the office's funding was at the same rate per head of population as in Northern Ireland, then it should have a budget of €20 million per year, Mr Neville said.

He pointed to the case of a 13-year-old girl who spent nine months in hospital surrounded by patients in their 50s to 80s, due to the lack of child and adolescent psychiatric facilities. "This is totally inappropriate," he said.

Sinn Féin's Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin told the gathering that all GPs in Cavan and Monaghan were recently told that the child and adolescent psychiatric services would only receive urgent and emergency referrals for at least four months. He said such underfunding was "a scandal".

Iris Robinson, chairwoman of the Northern committee, said it had abandoned an inquiry into hospital-acquired infections so it could begin "an urgent inquiry into the growing scourge of suicide, particularly among young people".

She praised Pieta, a new centre in Lucan, Dublin, for the prevention of suicide and self-harm and said this should receive strong Government support.

The difficulty in identifying suicidal pregnant women and mothers was also highlighted yesterday at the Royal College of Surgeons' nursing and midwifery conference in Dublin.

The University of Ulster study Investigating Suicide in midwifery Research and Practice pointed out up to 15 per cent of women suffer from post-natal depression with up to a half of them developing a severe depressive illness.

Between one in two and one in three pregnant women with a history of psychiatric disorder will have a relapse, most likely within the first month of the birth.

Iain McGowan, one of the report's authors, told The Irish Timesthat one of the greatest challenges was that pregnant women were often seen too late in their pregnancy to allow their medication to be altered.

The study examined UK birth reports from 1985 to 2002 and found 129 suicides, or 0.09 per 100,000 maternities were recorded. It recommended that the assessment of suicide risk and mental health should be "a major consideration" when planning antenatal care.