Sir, – The HSE’s attempts to silence consultant psychiatrist Alan Moore, with regard to the closure of St Michael’s hospital in Clonmel, are disturbing but not surprising (Home News, September 7th). Although the HSE makes all the right noises about involving service users and their families in important decisions, when it comes to the crunch those groups just don’t figure.
Sure enough, Alan Moore’s voicing of their concerns, and those of his colleagues, was dealt with in almost Stalinist fashion. The HSE statement that “Information given to the public must never cause unnecessary public concern” is genuinely sinister in tone, and indicative of how far that organisation is prepared to go to control the news flow.
The people of Tipperary are, clearly, genuinely concerned about the reconfiguration of mental health services, yet debate is stifled, and the views of those at the frontline ignored.
Here in Wexford, our experience was the same. Although the professionals, and service users, were against it, St Senan’s hospital was closed, and acute care was transferred to Waterford. None of the consultants spoke out. The upshot is that acute cases, including those who have attempted suicide, are now treated far away from family and friends.
The fact that the HSE has mismanaged the mental health services, over a long period, just makes matters worse. There is no coherent national strategy, change is piecemeal, and glaring disparities in service provision, and staffing levels, are everywhere.
Only now, in 2011, is a Directorate of Mental Health Services to be established, on the intervention of Kathleen Lynch. This was one of the first recommendations of Vision For Change, published in 2005, yet it, like most of the document, was never implemented. Service users, like myself, are left to wonder what the real agenda of the HSE is. In that context, the bullying of those who speak out is profoundly worrying.
The lesson of all this is that the HSE is, perversely, becoming a danger to our health. Issues like the difficulties the Clonmel closure poses for patients and their families simply don’t appear on its radar. Uncompassionate, bureaucratic, secretive, and totalitarian, it has now little meaningful connection with the notion of health care.
Like the psychiatric hospitals it starved of investment, and now arbitrarily closes, the HSE is no longer fit for purpose. – Yours, etc,
