Madam, – Carl O’Brien (“Hundreds of disabled in unsuitable institutions”, August 25th) refers to 308 intellectually disabled people living in psychiatric hospitals in the State. In fact this is only part of the story.
In the 1980s, recognising that many people with an intellectual disability were misplaced in psychiatric hospitals, the health boards began the process of “de-designation”. In many parts of the country this involved moving the residents with an intellectual disability to one end of the psychiatric hospital and officially deeming it “the community”. (I’m not joking.) Thereafter, these units were run and managed separately from the psychiatric hospital, while sharing the same building.
These residents are not included in the 308 mentioned in Mr O’Brien’s article. In the National Intellectual Disability Database the institutions where they live are recorded as “village type/residential centres”. Many of these are locked units, where, instead of receiving the therapies they need, residents are detained (without due process – a breach of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights). Yet there is little evidence that any of them have benefited from the protections of the new Mental Health Act, available to their fellow citizens a few yards away in the same building.
It’s difficult to be certain how many people in the State live in these conditions, but in one area, representing 5 per cent of the country’s population, I am aware of 123. The total is likely to dwarf the 308 mentioned above.
What is certain is that, 20 years after being moved “out” of psychiatric hospitals, hundreds and hundreds of intellectually disabled people – the most vulnerable members of our society – live on in Dickensian buildings in a twilight zone of detention and institutionalisation.
– Yours, etc,