Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 January 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children

Wellness, Well-being and Mental Health: Discussion

9:30 am

Photo of Robert TroyRobert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our two witnesses and thank them for their presentations. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Mr. Breslin because we attended the same school, although he is a few years older than me. I compliment him on the work he does in promoting positive mental health, be it in our Mullingar community or on a broader national stage. A key aspect of mental health is that we all have a part to play and we all need to be vigilant. I spoke with a class at Saint Finian's College this week. The students were asking about different issues. I made the point that they all need to be vigilant about each other. There are occasions when they might notice a change in a person's regular activities, a retreat or drawing back from normal activities, giving up sports or a change in circumstances. Then, each of us has a responsibility to ask "Are you okay?" in order to let someone know that there is a friendly ear available. Sometimes that is all it takes. I compliment Mr. Breslin on using his profile to bring this issue centre stage. How we, as a society, deal with mental health and how we talk about the issue and engage with it is getting progressively better. When one looks back to institutions such as St. Loman's Hospital in Mullingar and how mental health was dealt with a number of decades ago - when 600 or 700 staff in that institution dealt with the same number of patients - it is obvious that we have come a long way. However, there is still a long way to go. Again, I compliment Mr. Breslin on the work he is doing in bringing us on that journey.

It is fair to say that mental health plays second fiddle in the health organisation when it comes to budgets. In recent years, we have seen some of the mental health budget diverted to prop up the rest of the budget. That is not something we can stand over. Mental health is just as important as any other part of our health service. There is a very disjointed approach. Dr. D'Alton gave examples of families with whom he has dealt and I am sure all members have dealt with families in their constituencies who are tied up in bureaucracy and passed from pillar to post. They are told there is nobody there today and to come back tomorrow. If it were not for the likes of Good2Talk in Mullingar and Longford or Pieta House in Lucan, many more families would be bereaved through suicide. If it were not for the voluntary efforts of so many community groups, many more families would be bereaved.

Depending on whom one talks or listens to, there is divergence of opinion. I was at a conference Dr. Tony Bates organised 12 to 18 months ago where he asked whether by overly talking about suicide, we were actually normalising it and making it seem like an acceptable out. I may not be describing his point in the right words, but I would be interested to hear Dr. D'Alton's opinion in this regard. How does he think we can get a more streamlined approach? He spoke about easy access to talk therapy and counselling services, which are critical. One thing we need is to have career guidance counsellors reinstated in every second level school in Ireland. They were go-to people. Outside the school environment, how can we introduce a more streamlined approach? In some towns, we have many community groups operating while in a town 20 or 30 miles down the road, there may be no services due to the absence of the same level of community involvement. As such, we need a more streamlined, joined-up approach to how we roll this out. There is no question about where a hospital is located and where the environs which it looks after extend, but there is a great question in terms of mental health services and who they look after. If one breaks one's arm, one knows which accident and emergency unit to attend and what level of treatment will be available.

These are just a few thoughts. I compliment both witnesses and thank them for coming here today. As the Chairman has said, we are in a transitional period and nobody knows who will make up the next Government. One thing that must be done is to put mental health at the top of the programme for Government of whichever parties comprise it.

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