On the edge? Debate on mental health

HOSPITALS IN Ireland spend too much time diagnosing mental illness and little time promoting positive mental health, Prof Ivor Browne told The Irish TimesPfizer Health Forum last night.

Prof Browne, professor emeritus of psychiatry at University College Dublin, said the training of psychiatrists was one of the causes of this problem as they have little experience of psychotherapy.

“I don’t think we have a mental health service here,” he said. “I think we have a mental illness service.”

Speaking during the debate, which was entitled Mental Health in Ireland – Is Ireland on the edge?, Prof Browne said he felt the over-prescription of anti-depressant drugs was deepening the problem by pushing people who had problems into positions where they were considered to have an illness. John Redican of the National Service Users Executive said mental health was in the margins in terms of health spending and was grossly neglected by politicians. He said the area should account for 8.2 per cent of health spending but only received 5.4 per cent this year.

“Mental health is central to well being,” he said. “If you don’t have good mental health you’ll be impoverished.”

Geoff Day, director of the National Suicide Prevention Office, said a lack of investment in the area had taken Irish mental health services closer to the edge.

Mr Day said the Government’s Vision for Change programme for the mental health sector was a good strategy, but that having the required funds invested was a major issue in the current climate.

However, he said a growing public interest in the matter was a source of encouragement.

Tony Bates, director of Headstrong, the national centre for youth mental health, agreed that the focus in Ireland was more on mental illness than health and stressed that conversation was a better cure than placing people in beds or on medication.