Govt slammed on mental health plan

Psychiatrists have claimed that at the present rate of progress, it will take 40 years to implement the "Vision for Change" blueprint for mental health service development.

In a new review of the Government plan launched in January 2006, the College of Psychiatry in Ireland reports that three-and-a-half years later, 53% of mental health services had consistently low levels of recruitment of the required or recommended multidisciplinary team members.

Only one-sixth of services had received the resourcing promised and one-third of services were neither promised nor provided with any expansion of their clinical teams during a time of modernisation, change and promised and available investment, the College has pointed out.

Dr Siobhan Barry, one of the lead authors of the report, said if the present rate of progress continues it will take 40 years to implement the Government blueprint.

The document says any developments that were funded were piecemeal and there was no coordinated effort to improve services nationally

In a survey of mental health services around the country, the College's report found that only one-sixth of services reported that they had actually received developments and resourcing promised through "Vision for Change".

Thirty-two per cent  of services were neither promised nor was there any tangible evidence that they had had any enhancement of their clinical teams during a time of modernisation, change and promised investment.

More than half of the remaining services reported consistently low levels of recruitment of multidisciplinary team members.

In addition, the report points out, posts have also been suppressed and lost within the mental health service.

"These posts were lost not through service planning but rather as a result of the public service staffing embargo and the axing of unfilled posts that happened to be vacant on a given date."

In addition, the College says, non-filling of posts vacant through retirement, illness or maternity leave in the mental health services is frequently reported.

The report said a commitment made to set up 18 additional multidisciplinary adult psychiatry teams had not been realised.

It points out that the €25 million in funding set aside for this purpose would have been adequate but that money was diverted from the psychiatric services by the HSE.

The Vision for Change document estimated that 1,803 new staff is needed to implement the policy, but at the current slow rate of recruitment this could take 40 years, the College says.

It doubts whether the more complex and challenging aspects if implementing the "Vision" plan will ever be achieved.

The College points out that this lack of development is against a background of increasing admissions to psychiatric units in recent years.

There has been a substantial increase recently in the number of "new long-stay" patients, who have been in patients for more than a year but less than five years, the report states.

The College has called for mental health services to be exempted from the recent public service recruitment embargo.

It also wants finding from the sale of old mental hospitals to be invested in mental health services and has urged that the development funding as promised in Vision for Change to be secured from the Department of Finance.

The College says mental health service should also be exempt from any further health service cuts.

[Posted: Thu 21/05/2009]