Human Rights and Mental Health

The neglect in Ireland of those with mental illness has not only been reflected in the inadequate funding to the area. Shamefully, a number of those with mental illness have been subjected to major human rights abuses, particularly in State institutions. The level of involuntary detentions in psychiatric hospitals - 10 % of overall admissions - is still significantly higher than the levels in many of our EU neighbours, although the introduction of mental health tribunals in November 2006 should start to bring these numbers down. A Mental Health Commission report earlier this year, highlighted by Schizophrenia Ireland, supported many of the complaints made by patients' relatives concerning the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum. Patients' rights and dignity were infringed by the standard of clinical care available to them. There was unnecessary and unsupervised use of seclusion and restraint in the hospital.

Additional concerns must also be raised about the method whereby traditional mental hospitals are closed down and patients transferred to 'community facilities'. Properly implementing a community-based strategy must involve far more than merely creating 'mini-institutes' or shifting patients to ill-suited nursing homes at community level. For instance, in 2005, 23 long stay patients were moved from St. Ita's hospital to the now infamous Leas Cross Nursing Home, where a number of abuses were chronicled and exposed by RTE's Primetime programme.
The Irish Government is legally obliged under international treaties to work towards the highest attainable standard of mental health for everyone. Issues of social exclusion and problems with access to education, housing and employment have to all be addressed. The mental health services must be directed to the full recovery of the individual concerned. The Green Party in Government would initiate a media campaign on mental health to endeavour to remove the stigma of mental illness in Irish society. Our plans for community-based strategies will also assist in this process.

We regard this Government's plans to re-locate the Central Mental Hospital to a site alongside the planned Thornton Prison as being totally unacceptable. Such a move will accentuate the stigma and isolation/social exclusion of the mentally ill.