Introduction: Community-based care

The Green Party's Health Policy is based on a comprehensive primary health care strategy, which emphasises preventative medicine and early detection and intervention. Such an approach is required across a range of health services, including the greatly neglected area of mental health. Despite a number of Government plans and strategies over the years - including last year's 'A Vision for Change' - very little reform has been implemented. A recent report from the Inspector of Mental Services indicates that only one in 16 catchment areas are able to offer a wide range of multi-disciplinary services to people in the community with mental health problems.

The system of delivering mental healthcare must change radically. General Practitioners are currently the backbone of primary mental health services and mental health problems surface in one in four GP consultations. But in deprived areas, where mental health needs are greatest, GP services are often unavailable. Therefore even this basic provision is missing.
The Green Party's health strategy will focus on bolstering this front-line GP care: we will establish primary health care centres in our communities, consisting of multi-disciplinary teams: e.g. psychiatrists, nutritionists, therapists and social workers, as well as GPs and nurses. Such an approach to healthcare, including mental healthcare, is long overdue. It is also a goal in mental health to switch treatments from drug therapy - (GPs have tended to rely on medication as treatment) -- towards counselling and psychological services which are often more efficacious and cost-effective.

Mental health has long been the neglected area of Irish healthcare and matters are no better in today's prosperous Ireland. Indeed, twenty years ago the proportion of the health budget devoted to mental health was almost double what it is today and there are now great regional disparities in the resources given to mental care.

The Green Party has pledged in Government to ensure a minimum of 12% of the health budget will go towards mental health (it's currently less than 7%). This funding will go in part towards:

• Developing community mental health teams, with 7-days a week emergency cover;
• Significantly increasing the number of postgraduate training places for clinical psychologists and enhanced training for other mental healthcare practitioners;
• Putting in place the necessary infrastructure to shift from reliance on institutional care in traditional mental hospitals to an era of community care in more appropriate accommodation and facilities.