Mental health

An abject failure to respond to the needs of those young people who experience mental health problems, is a sad reflection on…

An abject failure to respond to the needs of those young people who experience mental health problems, is a sad reflection on the political priorities of this Government.

The Estimates of last week were supposed to reflect the Government's willingness to spend money on the marginalised and to create a more caring society. But that has not yet happened where some of our most vulnerable citizens are concerned.

Dangerous inadequacies in the provision of psychiatric care for children and adolescents were written about by Carl O'Brien in this newspaper yesterday. But those organisational failures should not come as a surprise to the Government. A succession of official reports has specified the shortcomings in care services for young people at risk, including a lack of proper outreach services and in-patient accommodation, and the need for more psychiatrists specialising in children and adolescents. Four years ago, a working group from the Department of Health acknowledged it was inappropriate to treat children or adolescents in adult psychiatric units. But that is still happening. And not a single one of the in-patient units for adolescents, recommended as a matter of urgency by the working group, has been built.

The same shameful neglect of human rights is reflected in the annual report of the National Prison Chaplains who declared at the weekend that the prison service had changed gear "from slow progress to steady regression". They expressed concern over prison living conditions, the use of padded cells, the jailing of mentally ill prisoners and the use of prisons as detention centres for non-nationals awaiting deportation.

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Those politicians who believe that more prison places are a quick-fix solution to crime should listen carefully to the chaplains. The Courts, they said, appeared to believe that prisons had appropriate psychiatric facilities in place. But such was not the case. Prisons must not become a dumping ground for mentally ill people. At the same time, however, there is a need to provide a full range of psychiatric service. Existing failures in the community healthcare system have to be addressed and, in that regard, basic psychiatric care for children and adolescents must be provided as a matter of urgency.

The Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children, Ms Harney, knows what is required in the area of mental health. She and her Government colleagues could paper a good-sized room with the official reports on the topic. She must now convince other Ministers to provide the resources necessary to end this wilful neglect of our young and most vulnerable citizens.